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THE 

IRON 

PUDDLER 


JAMES  J.  DAVIS 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 


MY  LIFE  IN  THE  ROLLING  MILLS  AND 
WHAT  CAME  OF  IT 


By 
JAMES  J.   DAVIS 


Introduction  "by 

JOSEPH  G.  CANNON 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MEREILL  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHT,  1922 
BY  THE  BOBBS-MEKRILL  COMPANY 


Printed  in  the  United  Stateg  of  America 


LIBRARY 


INTRODUCTION 

The  man  whose  life  story  is  here  presented 
between  book  covers  is  at  the  time  of  writing 
only  forty-eight  years  old.  When  I  met  him 
many  years  ago  he  was  a  young  man  full  of 
enthusiasm.  I  remember  saying  to  him  then, 
"With  your  enthusiasm  and  the  sparkle  which 
you  have  in  your  eyes  I  am  sure  you  will 
make  good." 

Why  should  so  young  a  man,  one  so  recently 
elevated  to  official  prominence,  write  his 
memoirs?  That  question  will  occur  to  those 
who  do  not  know  Jim  Davis.  His  elevation 
to  a  Cabinet  post  marks  not  the  beginning  of 
his  career,  but  rather  is  the  curtain-rise  on  the 
second  act  of  one  of  those  dramatic  lives  with 
which  America  has  so  often  astounded  the 
world.  Bruised  and  bleeding  in  a  southern 
peon  camp,  where  he  and  other  hungry  men 
had  been  trapped  by  a  brutal  slave  driver,  he 
drank  the  bitter  cup  of  unrequited  toil.  And 
from  this  utter  depth,  in  less  than  thirty 
years,  he  rose  to  the  office  of  secretary  of 
labor.  There  is  drama  enough  for  one  life  if 


INTRODUCTION 

his  career  should  end  to-day.  And  while  this 
man  fought  his  way  upward,  he  carried  others 
with  him,  founding  by  his  efforts  and  their 
cooperation,  the  great  school  called  Moose- 
heart.  More  than  a  thousand  students  of  both 
sexes,  ranging  from  one  to  eighteen  years,  are 
there  receiving  their  preparation  for  life.  The 
system  of  education  observed  there  is  prob- 
ably the  best  ever  devised  to  meet  the  needs 
of  all  humanity. 

The  brain  of  James  J.  Davis  fathered  this 
educational  system.  It  is  his  contribution  to 
the  world,  and  the  world  has  accepted  it.  The 
good  it  promised  is  already  being  realized,  its 
fruits  are  being  gathered.  Its  blessings  are 
falling  on  a  thousand  young  Americans,  and 
its  influence  like  a  widening  ripple  is  extend- 
ing farther  every  day.  It  promises  to  reach 
and  benefit  every  child  in  America.  And  to 
hasten  the  growth  of  this  new  education, 
James  J.  Davis  has  here  written  the  complete 
story.  I  have  known  Mr.  Davis  many  years 
and  am  one  of  the  thousands  who  believe  in 
him  and  have  helped  further  his  work. 

The  author  of  this  autobiography  is  indeed 
a  remarkable  man.  He  is  sometimes  called 
the  Napoleon  of  Fraternity.  Love  of  his  fel- 


INTRODUCTION 

lows  is  his  ruling  passion.  He  can  call  more 
than  ten  thousand  men  by  their  first  names. 
His  father  taught  him  this  motto :  "No  man  is 
greater  than  his  friends.  All  the  good  that 
comes  into  your  life  will  come  from  your 
friends.  If  you  lose  your  friends  your 
enemies  will  destroy  you."  Davis  has  stood 
by  his  friends.  As  a  labor  leader  and  a  fra- 
ternal organizer,  he  has  proved  his  ability. 
Thousands  think  he  is  unequaled  as  an  ora- 
tor, thinker  and  entertainer.  His  zeal  is  all 
for  humanity  and  he  knows  man's  needs.  He 
has  dedicated  his  life  to  the  cause  of  better 
education  for  the  workers  of  this  land.  His 
cause  deserves  a  hearing. 


WASHINGTON,  D.  G., 
JUNE,  1922. 


PREFACE 

"Where  were  you  previous  to  the  eighth 
and  immediately  subsequent  thereto?"  asked 
the  city  attorney. 

The  prisoner  looked  sheepish  and  made  no 
answer.  A  box  car  had  been  robbed  on  the 
eighth  and  this  man  had  been  arrested  in  the 
freight  yards.  He  claimed  to  be  a  steel 
worker  and  had  shown  the  judge  his  calloused 
hands.  He  had  answered  several  questions 
about  his  trade,  his  age  and  where  he  was 
when  the  policeman  arrested  him.  But  when 
they  asked  him  what  he  had  been  doing 
previous  to  and  immediately  subsequent 
thereto,  he  hung  his  head  as  if  at  a  loss  for  an 
alibi. 

I  was  city  clerk  at  the  time  and  had  been  a 
steel  worker.  I  knew  why  the  man  refused 
to  answer.  He  didn't  understand  the  phrase- 
ology. 

"Where  were  you  previous  to  the  eighth 
and  immediately  subsequent  thereto?"  the  at- 
torney asked  him  for  the  third  time. 


PREFACE 

All  the  prisoner  could  do  was  look  guilty 
and  say  nothing. 

"Answer  the  question,"  ordered  the  judge, 
"or  I'll  send  you  up  for  vagrancy." 

Still  the  man  kept  silent.    Then  I  spoke  up : 

"John,  tell  the  court  where  you  were  be- 
fore you  came  here  and  also  where  you  have 
been  since  you  arrived  in  the  city." 

"I  was  in  Pittsburgh,"  he  said,  and  he  pro- 
ceeded to  tell  the  whole  story  of  his  life.  He 
was  still  talking  when  they  chased  him  out  of 
court  and  took  up  the  next  case.  He  was  a 
free  man,  and  yet  he  had  come  within  an  inch 
of  going  to  jail.  All  because  he  didn't  know 
what  "previous  to  the  eighth  and  immediately 
subsequent  thereto"  meant. 

The  man  was  an  expert  puddler.  A  pud- 
dler  makes  iron  bars.  They  were  going  to 
put  him  behind  his  own  bars  because  he 
couldn't  understand  the  legal  jargon.  Thanks 
to  the  great  educational  system  of  America 
the  working  man  has  improved  his  mental 
muscle  as  well  as  his  physical. 

This  taught  me  a  lesson.  Jargon  can  put 
the  worker  in  jail.  Big  words  and  improper 
phraseology  are  prison  bars  that  sometimes 
separate  the  worker  from  the  professional 


PREFACE 

people.  "Stone  walls  do  not  a  prison  make," 
because  the  human  mind  can  get  beyond 
them.  But  thick-shelled  words  do  make  a 
prison.  They  are  something  that  the  human 
mind  can  not  penetrate.  A  man  whose  skill 
is  in  his  hands  can  puddle  a  two  hundred- 
pound  ball  of  iron.  A  man  whose  skill  is  on 
his  tongue  can  juggle  four-syllable  words. 
But  that  iron  puddler  could  not  savvy  four- 
syllable  words  any  more  than  the  word  jug- 
gler could  puddle  a  heat  of  iron.  The  brain 
worker  who  talks  to  the  hand  worker  in  a 
special  jargon  the  latter  can  not  understand 
has  built  an  iron  wall  between  the  worker's 
mind  and  his  mind.  To  tear  down  that  wall 
and  make  America  one  nation  with  one 
language  is  one  of  the  tasks  of  the  new 
education. 

If  big  words  cause  misunderstandings,  why 
not  let  them  go?  When  the  stork  in  the  fable 
invited  the  fox  to  supper  he  served  the  bean 
soup  in  a  long-necked  vase.  The  stork  had  a 
beak  that  reached  down  the  neck  of  the  vase 
and  drank  the  soup  with  ease.  The  fox  had 
a  short  muzzle  and  couldn't  get  it.  The  trick 
made  him  mad  and  he  bit  the  stork's  head  off. 
[Why  should  the  brain  worker  invite  the 


PREFACE 

manual  worker  to  a  confab  and  then  serve 
the  feast  in  such  long-necked  language  that 
the  laborer  can't  get  it?  "Let's  spill  the 
beans,"  the  agitator  tells  him,  "then  we'll  all 
get  some  of  the  gravy." 

This  long-necked  jargon  must  go.  It  is  not 
the  people's  dish.  With  foggy  phrases  that 
no  one  really  understands  they  are  trying  to 
incite  the  hand  worker  to  bite  off  the  head  of 
the  brain  worker.  When  employer  and  em- 
ployee sit  together  at  the  council  table,  let  the 
facts  be  served  in  such  simple  words  that  we 
can  all  get  our  teeth  into  them. 

When  I  became  secretary  of  labor  I  said 
that  the  employer  and  employee  had  a  duty 
to  perform  one  to  the  other,  and  both  to  the 
public. 

Capital  does  not  always  mean  employer. 
When  I  was  a  boy  in  Sharon,  Pennsylvania,  I 
looked  in  a  pool  in  the  brook  and  discovered 
a  lot  of  fish.  I  broke  some  branches  off  a 
tree,  and  with  this  I  brushed  the  fish  out  of 
the  pool.  I  sold  them  to  a  teamster  for  ten 
cents.  With  this  I  bought  shoe  blacking  and 
a  shoe  brush  and  spent  my  Saturdays  black- 
ing boots  for  travelers  at  the  depot  and  the 
hotel.  I  had  established  a  boot-blacking 


PREFACE 

business  which  I  pushed  in  my  spare  time  for 
several  years.  My  brush  and  blacking  repre- 
sented my  capital.  The  shining  of  the  travel- 
ers' shoes  was  labor.  I  was  a  capitalist  but 
not  an  employer;  I  was  a  laborer  but  not  an 
employee. 

"Labor  is  prior  to  and  independent  of  capi- 
tal," said  Lincoln.  This  is  true.  I  labored  to 
break  the  branches  from  the  tree  before  I  had 
any  capital.  They  brought  me  fish,  which 
were  capital  because  I  traded  them  for  shoe 
blacking  with  which  I  earned  enough  money 
to  buy  ten  times  more  fish  than  I  had  caught. 

So  labor  is  prior  to  capital — when  you  use 
the  words  in  their  right  meaning.  But  call 
the  employee  "labor"  and  the  employer  "cap- 
ital," and  you  make  old  Honest  Abe  say  that 
the  employee  is  prior  to  and  independent  of 
the  employer,  or  that  the  wage  earner  is  inde- 
pendent of  the  wage  payer  or,  in  still  shorter 
words,  the  man  is  on  the  job  before  the  job  is 
created.  Which  is  nonsense. 

Capital  does  not  always  mean  employer. 
A  Liberty  Bond  is  capital  but  it  is  not  an  em- 
ployer; the  Government  is  an  employer  but 
it  is  not  capital,  and  when  any  one  is  arguing 
a  case  for  an  employee  against  his  employer 


PREFACE 

let  him  use  the  proper  terms.  The  misuse  of 
words  can  cause  a  miscarriage  of  justice  as 
the  misuse  of  railway  signals  can  send  a  train 
into  the  ditch. 

All  my  life  I  have  been  changing  big  words 
into  little  words  so  that  the  employee  can 
know  what  the  employer  is  saying  to  him. 
The  working  man  handles  things.  The  pro- 
fessional man  plies  words.  I  learned  things 
first  and  words  afterward.  Things  can  enrich 
a  nation,  and  words  can  impoverish  it.  The 
words  of  theorists  have  cost  this  nation  bil- 
lions which  must  be  paid  for  in  things. 

When  I  was  planning  a  great  school  for  the 
education  of  orphans,  some  of  my  associates 
said:  "Let  us  teach  them  to  be  pedagogues." 
I  said:  "No,  let  us  teach  them  the  trades.  A 
boy  with  a  trade  can  do  things.  A  theorist  can 
say  things.  Things  done  with  the  hands  are 
wealth,  things  said  with  the  mouth  are  words. 
When  the  housing  shortage  is  over  and  we 
find  the  nation  suffering  from  a  shortage  of 
words,  we  will  close  the  classes  in  carpentry 
and  open  a  class  in  oratory." 

This,  then  is  the  introduction  to  my  views 
and  to  my  policies.  They  are  now  to  have  a 
fair  trial,  like  that  other  iron  worker  in  the 


PREFACE 

Elwood  police  court.  I  know  what  the  word 
"previous"  means.  I  can  give  an  account  of 
myself.  So,  in  the  following  pages  I  will  tell 
"where  I  was  before  I  came  here." 

If  my  style  seems  rather  flippant,  it  is  be- 
cause I  have  been  trained  as  an  extempora- 
neous speaker  and  not  as  a  writer.  For  fifteen 
years  I  traveled  over  the  country  lecturing  on 
the  Mooseheart  School.  My  task  was  to  inter- 
est men  in  the  abstract  problems  of  child  edu- 
cation. A  speaker  must  entertain  his  hearers 
to  the  end  or  lose  their  attention.  And  so  I 
taxed  my  wit  to  make  this  subject  simple  and 
easy  to  listen  to.  At  last  I  evolved  a  style  of 
address  that  brought  my  points  home  to  the 
men  I  was  addressing. 

After  all  these  years  I  can  not  change  my 
style.  I  talk  more  easily  than  I  write;  there- 
fore, in  composing  this  book  I  have  imagined 
myself  facing  an  audience,  and  I  have  told 
my  story.  I  do  not  mention  the  names  of  the 
loyal  men  who  helped  work  out  the  plans  of 
Mooseheart  and  gave  the  money  that  estab- 
lished it,  for  their  number  is  so  great  that 
their  names  alone  would  fill  three  volumes 
as  large  as  this. 

J.  J.  D. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    THE  HOME-MADE  SUIT  OF 

CLOTHES 17 

II    A  TRAIT  OF  THE  WELSH 

PEOPLE 26 

III  No  GIFT  FROM  THE  FAIRIES   .  30 

IV  SHE  SINGS  TO  HER  NEST  .     .  35 
V    THE  LOST  FEATHER  BED  .     .  40 

VI    HUNTING  FOR  LOST  CHILDREN 

VII    HARD  SLEDDING  IN  AMERICA  .  51 

VIII    MY  FIRST  REGULAR  JOB    .     .  56 

IX    THE  SCATTERED  FAMILY  .      .  62 

X    MELODRAMA  BECOMES  COMEDY  68 

XI    KEEPING  OPEN  HOUSE     .     .  73 

XII    MY  HAND  TOUCHES  IRON  .     .  79 

XIII  SCENE  IN  A  ROLLING  MILL  .     .  85 

XIV  BOILING  DOWN  THE  PIGS  .     .  90 
XV    THE  IRON  BISCUITS     ...  96 

XVI    WRESTING  A  PRIZE  FROM 

NATURE'S  HAND  ....  101 

XVII    MAN  is  IRON  Too   ....  106 

XVIII    ON  BEING  A  GOOD  GUESSER    .  110 

XIX    I  START  ON  MY  TRAVELS  .     .  114 

XX    THE  RED  FLAG  AND  THE 

WATERMELONS    ....  119 
XXI    ENVY  is  THE  SULPHUR  IN 

HUMAN  PIG-!RON     .     .     .  125 
XXII    LOADED  DOWN  WITH  LITERA- 
TURE      129 

XXIII  THE  PUDDLER  HAS  A  VISION  134 

XXIV  JOE  THE  POOR  BRAKEMAN  .     .  140 
XXV    A  DROP  IN  THE  BUCKET  OF 

BLOOD   ,  145 


CONTENTS— Continued 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XXVI    A  GRUB  REFORMER  PUTS  Us 

OUT  OF  GRUB     ....     150 
XXVII    THE  PIE  EATER'S  PARADISE     .     153 
XXVIII    CAUGHT  IN  A  SOUTHERN  PEON- 
AGE CAMP 158 

XXIX    A  SICK,  EMACIATED  SOCIAL 

SYSTEM 169 

XXX    BREAKING  INTO  THE  TIN 

INDUSTRY 172 

XXXI    UNACCUSTOMED  AS  I  AM  TO 

PUBLIC  SPEAKING     .     .     .     178 
XXXII    LOGIC  WINS  IN  THE  STRETCH    187 

XXXIII  I  MEET  THE  INDUSTRIAL 

CAPTAINS 191 

XXXIV  SHIRTS  FOR  TIN  ROLLERS  .     .     195 
XXXV    AN  UPLIFTER  RULED  BY  ENVY    199 

XXXVI    GROWLING  FOR  THE  BOSSES' 

BLOOD 204 

XXXVII    FREE  AND  UNLIMITED  COINAGE  209 

XXXVIII    THE  EDITOR  GETS  MY  GOAT  215 
XXXIX    PUTTING  JAZZ  INTO  THE 

CAMPAIGN 219 

XL    FATHER  TOOK  ME  SERIOUSLY  224 
XLI    A  PAVING  CONTRACTOR  PUTS 

ME  ON  THE  PAVING   .     .     .  228 

XLII    THE  EVERLASTING  MORALIZER  236 
XLIII    FROM  TIN  WORKER  TO  SMALL 

CAPITALIST 240 

XLIV    A  CHANCE  TO  REALIZE  A 

DREAM 244 

XLV    THE  DREAM  COMES  TRUE     .  248 

XL VI    THE  MOOSEHEART  IDEA     .     .  253 

XL VII    LIFE'S  PROBLEMS    ....  257 
XLVHI    BUILDING  A  BETTER  WORLD 

BY  EDUCATION     ....  263 

XLIX    CONCLUSION 268 


THE 

IRON 

PUDDLER 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   HOME-MADE   SUIT  OF  CLOTHES 

A  FIGHT  in  the  first  chapter  made  a  book 
interesting  to  me  when  I  was  a  boy.  I  said 
to  myself,  "The  man  who  writes  several  chap- 
ters before  the  fighting  begins  is  like  the  man 
who  sells  peanuts  in  which  a  lot  of  the  shells 
haven't  any  goodies."  I  made  up  my  mind 
then  that  if  I  ever  wrote  a  book  I  would  have 
a  fight  in  the  first  chapter. 

So  I  will  tell  right  here  how  I  whipped  the 
town  bully  in  Sharon,  Pennsylvania.  I'll  call 
him  Babe  Durgon.  I've  forgotten  his  real 
name,  and  it  might  be  better  not  to  mention 
it  anyhow.  For  though  I  whipped  him  thirty 
years  ago,  he  might  come  back  now  in  a 
return  match  and  reverse  the  verdict,  so  that 
my  first  chapter  would  serve  better  as  my  last 
one.  Babe  was  older  than  I,  and  had  pestered 
me  from  the  time  I  was  ten.  Now  I  was 

17 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

eighteen  and  a  man.  I  was  a  master  puddler 
in  the  mill  and  a  musician  in  the  town  band 
(I  always  went  with  men  older  than  myself). 
Two  stove  molders  from  a  neighboring  fac- 
tory were  visiting  me  that  day,  and,  as  it  was 
dry  and  hot,  I  offered  to  treat  them  to  a  cool 
drink.  There  were  no  soda  fountains  in 
those  days  and  the  only  place  to  take  a  friend 
was  to  the  tavern.  We  went  in  and  my  com- 
panions ordered  beer.  Babe,  the  bully,  was 
standing  by  the  bar.  He  had  just  come  of 
age,  and  wanted  to  bulldoze  me  with  that 
fact. 

"Don't  serve  Jimmy  Davis  a  beer,"  Babe 
commanded.  "He's  a  minor.  He  can't  buy 
beer." 

"I  didn't  want  a  beer,"  I  said.  "I  was  going 
to  order  a  soft  drink." 

"Yes,  you  was.  Like  hell  you  was,"  Babe 
taunted.  "You  came  in  here  to  get  a  beer  like 
them  fellers.  You  think  you're  a  man,  but 
I  know  you  ain't.  And  I'm  here  to  see  that 
nobody  sells  liquor  to  a  child." 

I  was  humiliated.  The  bully  knew  that  I 
wanted  to  be  a  man,  and  his  shot  stung  me. 
My  friends  looked  at  me  as  if  to  ask:  "Are 
you  going  to  take  that?"  And  so  the  fight  was 

18 


THE  HOME-MADE  SUIT  OF  CLOTHES 

arranged,  although  I  had  no  skill  at  boxing, 
and  was  too  short-legged,  like  most  Welsh- 
men, for  a  fast  foot  race.  Babe  had  me  up 
against  a  real  problem. 

"Gome  on  over  the  line,"  he  said. 

Sharon  was  near  the  Ohio  border  and  it  was 
customary  to  go  across  the  state  line  to  fight, 
so  that  on  returning  the  local  peace  officers 
would  have  no  jurisdiction.  We  started  for  the 
battle  ground.  Babe  had  never  been  whipped; 
he  always  chose  younger  opponents.  He  was 
a  good  gouger,  and  had  marked  up  most  of 
the  boys  on  the  "flats"  as  we  called  the  low- 
lands where  the  poorer  working  people  lived. 
A  gouger  is  one  who  stabs  with  his  thumb. 
When  he  gets  his  sharp  thumb-nail  into  the 
victim's  eye,  the  fight  is  over.  Biting  and 
kicking  were  his  second  lines  of  attack. 

As  we  walked  along  I  was  depressed  by  the 
thought  that  I  was  badly  outclassed.  There 
was  only  one  thing  in  my  favor.  I  hated 
Babe  Durgon  with  a  bitter  loathing  that  I  had 
been  suppressing  for  years.  It  all  went  back 
to  the  summer  of  1884  when  I  was  eleven 
years  old.  Times  were  hard,  and  the  mill  was 
"down."  Father  had  gone  to  Pittsburgh  to 
look  for  work.  I  was  scouring  the  town  of 

19 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

Sharon  to  pick  up  any  odd  job  that  would 
earn  me  a  nickel.  There  were  no  telephones 
and  I  used  to  carry  notes  between  sweet- 
hearts, pass  show  bills  for  the  "opry,"  and 
ring  a  hand-bell  for  auctions.  An  organized 
charity  had  opened  headquarters  on  Main 
Street  to  collect  clothing  and  money  for  the 
destitute  families  of  the  workers.  I  went  up 
there  to  see  if  they  needed  an  errand  boy.  A 
Miss  Foraker — now  Mrs.  F.  H.  Buhl — was  in 
charge.  She  was  a  sweet  and  gracious  young 
woman  and  she  explained  that  they  had  no 
pay-roll. 

"Everybody  works  for  nothing  here,"  she 
said.  "I  get  no  pay,  and  the  landlord  gives 
us  the  use  of  the  rooms  free.  This  is  a  public 
charity  and  everybody  contributes  his  ser- 
vices free." 

I  saw  a  blue  serge  boy's  suit  among  the 
piles  of  garments.  It  was  about  my  size  and 
had  seen  little  wear.  I  thought  it  was  the 
prettiest  suit  I  had  ever  seen.  I  asked  Miss 
Foraker  how  much  money  it  would  take  to 
buy  the  suit.  She  said  nothing  was  for  sale. 
She  wrapped  up  the  suit  and  placed  the  pack- 
age in  my  arms,  saying,  "That's  for  you, 
Jimmy." 

20 


THE  HOME-MADE  SUIT  OF  CLOTHES 

I  raced  home  and  climbed  into  the  attic 
of  our  little  four-dollar-a-month  cottage, 
and  in  the  stifling  heat  under  the  low  roof  I 
changed  my  clothes.  Then  I  proudly  climbed 
down  to  show  my  blue  suit  to  my  mother. 

"Where  did  you  get  those  clothes,  James?" 
she  asked  gravely. 

I  told  her  about  Miss  Foraker. 

"Did  you  work  for  them?" 

"No;  everything  is  free,"  I  said. 

Mother  told  me  to  take  the  suit  off.  I  went 
to  the  attic,  blinking  a  tear  out  of  my  eyes, 
and  changed  into  my  old  rags  again.  Then 
mother  took  the  blue  suit,  wrapped  it  up  care- 
fully and  putting  it  in  my  hands  told  me  to 
take  it  back  to  Miss  Foraker. 

"You  don't  understand,  James,"  she  said. 
"But  these  clothes  are  not  for  people  like  us. 
These  are  to  be  given  to  the  poor." 

I  have  often  smiled  as  I  looked  back  on  it. 
I'll  bet  there  wasn't  a  dime  in  the  house.  The 
patches  on  my  best  pants  were  three  deep 
and  if  laid  side  by  side  would  have  covered 
more  territory  than  the  new  blue  suit.  To 
take  those  clothes  back  was  the  bitterest 
sacrifice  my  heart  has  ever  known. 

A  few  days  later  there  was  a  fire  sale  by 
21 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

one  of  the  merchants,  and  I  got  the  job  of 
ringing  the  auction  bell.  Late  in  the  after- 
noon the  auctioneer  held  up  a  brown  over- 
coat. "Here  is  a  fine  piece  of  goods,  only 
slightly  damaged,"  he  said.  He  showed  the 
back  of  the  coat  where  a  hole  was  burned  in 
it.  "How  much  "am  I  offered?" 

I  knew  that  I  would  get  fifty  cents  for  my 
day's  work,  so  I  bid  ten  cents — all  that  I  could 
spare. 

"Sold,"  said  the  auctioneer,  "for  ten  cents 
to  the  kid  who  rang  the  bell  all  day." 

I  took  the  garment  home  and  told  my 
mother  how  I  had  bought  it  for  cash  in  open 
competition  with  all  the  world.  My  mother 
and  my  aunt  set  to  work  with  shears  and 
needles  and  built  me  a  suit  of  clothes  out  of 
the  brown  overcoat.  It  took  a  lot  of  ingenu- 
ity to  make  the  pieces  come  out  right.  The 
trousers  were  neither  long  nor  short.  They 
dwindled  down  and  stopped  at  my  calves, 
half-way  above  my  ankles.  What  I  hated 
most  was  that  the  seams  were  not  in  the  right 
places.  It  was  a  patchwork,  and  there  were 
seams  down  the  front  of  the  legs  where  the 
crease  ought  to  be.  I  didn't  want  to  wear  the 
suit,  but  mother  said  it  looked  fine  on  me, 

22 


THE  HOME-MADE  SUIT  OF  CLOTHES 

and  if  she  said  so  I  knew  it  must  be  true.    I 
wore  it  all  fall  and  half  the  winter. 

The  first  time  I  went  to  Sunday-school,  I 
met  Babe  Durgon.    He  set  up  the  cry: 


"Little  boy,  little  boy, 

Does  your  mother  know  you're  out; 

With  your  breeches  put  on  backward, 

And  the  seams  all  inside  out!" 


This  was  the  first  time  that  my  spirit  had 
been  hurt.  His  words  were  a  torment  that 
left  a  scar  upon  my  very  soul.  Even  to  this 
day  when  I  awake  from  some  bad  dream,  it 
is  a  dream  that  I  am  wearing  crazy  breeches 
and  all  the  world  is  jeering  at  me.  It  has 
made  me  tender  toward  poor  children  who 
have  to  wear  hand-me-downs. 

To-day  psychologists  talk  much  of  the 
"inferiority  complex"  which  spurs  a  man  for- 
ward to  outdo  himself.  But  Babe  Durgon  and 
I  didn't  go  into  these  matters  as  we  trudged 
along  through  the  dark  on  our  way  to  do 
battle  "over  the  line."  At  the  foot  of  the  hill, 
Babe  exclaimed: 

"What's  the  use  of  going  any  farther?  Let's 
fight  here."  It  was  in  front  of  a  new  building 
— a  church-school  half  completed.  We  took 

23 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

off  our  coats  and  made  belts  of  our  suspend- 
ers. Then  we  squared  off  and  the  fight 
began.  Babe  rushed  me  like  a  wild  boar  and 
tried  to  thrust  his  deadly  thumb  into  my  eye. 
I  threw  up  my  head  and  his  thumb  gashed 
my  lips  and  went  into  my  mouth.  The  impact 
almost  knocked  me  over,  but  my  teeth  had 
closed  on  his  thumb  and  when  he  jerked  back 
he  put  me  on  my  balance  again.  I  clouted 
him  on  the  jaw  and  knocked  him  down.  He 
landed  in  the  lime  box.  The  school  had  not 
yet  been  plastered,  and  the  quicklime  was  in 
an  open  pit.  I  started  in  after  the  bully,  but 
stopped  to  save  my  pants  from  the  lime. 
There  was  a  hose  near  by,  and  I  turned  the 
water  on  Babe  in  the  lime  bath.  The  lime 
completely  covered  him.  He  was  whipped 
and  in  fear  of  his  life.  Choking  and  weeping 
he  hollered,  "Nuff"  We  got  him  out,  too  weak 
to  stand,  and  gently  leaned  him  up  in  a  corner 
of  the  school  building.  There  we  left  the 
crushed  bully  and  returned  to  town.  But 
before  I  went  I  gave  him  this  parting  shot: 

"Do  you  know  why  I  licked  you,  Babe? 
It  wasn't  what  you  said  in  the  tavern  that 
made  me  mad.  I  didn't  want  a  glass  of  beer, 
and  you  were  right  in  saying  I  was  a  minor. 

24 


THE  HOME-MADE  SUIT  OF  CLOTHES 

Where  you  made  your  mistake  was  when  you 
made  fun  of  my  breeches,  seven  years  ago. 
And  do  you  remember  that  blue  suit  you  had 
on  at  the  time?  I  know  where  you  got  that 
blue  suit  of  clothes,  and  I  know  who  had  it 
before  you  got  it.  If  you  still  think  that  a 
bully  in  charity  clothes  can  make  fun  of  a 
boy  in  clothes  that  he  earned  with  his  own 
labor,  just  say  so,  and  I'll  give  you  another 
clout  that  will  finish  you." 

All  bullies,  whether  nations,  parties  or  indi- 
viduals, get  licked  in  the  same  way.  They 
outrage  some  one's  self-respect,  and  then  the 
old  primordial  cyclone  hits  them. 


CHAPTER  II 

A  TRAIT  OF  THE  WELSH  PEOPLE 

MY  FAMILY  is  Welsh,  and  I  was  born  in 
Tredegar,  Wales.  David  and  Davies  are 
favorite  names  among  the  Welsh,  probably 
because  David  whipped  Goliath,  and  mothers 
named  their  babies  after  the  champion.  The 
Welsh  are  a  small  nation  that  has  always  had 
to  fight  against  a  big  nation.  The  idea  that 
David  stopped  Goliath  seemed  to  reflect  their 
own  national  glory.  The  ancient  invasions 
that  poured  across  Britain  were  stopped  in 
Wales,  and  they  never  could  push  the  Welsh- 
men into  the  sea. 

The  Welsh  pride  themselves  on  hanging  on. 
They  are  a  nation  that  has  never  been 
whipped.  Every  people  has  its  characteris- 
tics. "You  can't  beat  the  Irish"  is  one  slogan, 
"You  can't  kill  a  Swede"  is  another,  and  "You 
can't  crowd  out  a  Welshman"  is  a  motto 
among  the  mill  people. 

I  didn't  want  to  leave  Wales  when  my  pa- 
26 


rents  were  emigrating.  Though  I  was  not 
quite  eight  years  old  I  decided  I  would  let 
them  go  without  me.  The  last  act  of  my 
mother  was  to  reach  under  the  bed,  take  hold 
of  my  heels  and  drag  me  out  of  the  house 
feet  first.  I  tried  to  hang  on  to  the  cracks  in 
the  floor,  and  tore  off  a  few  splinters  to  re- 
member the  old  homestead  by.  I  never  was 
quite  satisfied  with  that  leave-taking,  and 
nearly  forty  years  later  when  I  had  car  fare, 
I  went  back  to  that  town.  I  never  like  to  go 
out  of  a  place  feet  first,  and  I  cleared  my 
record  this  time  by  walking  out  of  my  native 
village,  head  up  and  of  my  own  free  will. 

On  that  trip  I  paid  a  visit  to  the  home  of 
Lloyd  George  in  Cricuth.  Joseph  Davies,  one 
of  the  war  secretaries  to  the  prime  minister, 
invited  me  to  dinner  and  we  talked  of  the 
American  form  of  government.  (Note  the 
spelling  of  Davies.  It  is  the  Welsh  spelling. 
When  my  father  signed  his  American  natur- 
alization papers  he  made  his  mark,  for  he 
could  not  read  nor  write.  The  official  wrote  in 
his  name,  spelling  it  Davis  and  so  it  has 
remained.)  "You  have  this  advantage,"  said 
Mr.  Davies.  "Your  president  is  secure  in 
office  for  four  years  and  can  put  his  policies 

27 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

through.  Our  prime  minister  has  no  fixed 
term  and  may  have  to  step  out  at  any 
minute." 

"Yes,"  I  replied  jokingly,  "but  your  prime 
minister  this  time  is  a  Welshman." 

Since  then  four  years  have  passed  and  our 
president  is  out.  But  Lloyd  George  is  still 
there  (1922).  And  he'll  still  be  there,  for  all 
I  know,  until  he  is  carried  out  feet  first.  The 
instinct  of  a  Welshman  is  to  hang  on. 

These  things  teach  us  that  racial  charac- 
teristics do  not  change.  In  letting  immigrants 
into  this  country  we  must  remember  this. 
Races  that  have  good  traits  built  up  good 
countries  there  abroad  and  they  will  in  the 
same  way  build  up  the  country  here.  Tribes 
that  have  swinish  traits  were  destroyers  there 
and  will  be  destroyers  here.  This  has  been 
common  knowledge  so  long  that  it  has 
become  a  proverb:  "You  can't  make  a  silk 
purse  out  of  a  sow's  ear." 

Proverbs  are  the  condensed  wisdom  of  the 
ages.  Life  has  taught  me  that  the  wisdom  of 
the  ages  is  the  truth.  The  Proverbs  and  the 
Ten  Commandments  answer  all  our  problems. 
My  mother  taught  them  to  me  when  I  was  a 
child  in  Wales.  I  have  gone  out  and  tasted 

28 


A  TRAIT  OF  THE  WELSH  PEOPLE 

life,  and  found  her  words  true.  Starting  at 
forge  and  furnace  in  the  roaring  mills,  facing 
facts  instead  of  books,  I  have  been  schooled 
in  life's  hard  lessons.  And  the  end  of  it  all  is 
the  same  as  the  beginning:  the  Proverbs, — 
the  Commandments, — and  the  Golden  Rule. 


CHAPTER  III 

NO  GIFT  FROM  THE  FAIRIES 

FROM  my  father  I  learned  many  things. 
He  taught  me  to  be  skilful  and  proud  of  it 
He  taught  me  to  expect  no  gift  from  life,  but 
that  what  I  got  I  must  win  with  my  hands. 
He  taught  me  that  good  men  would  bring 
forth  good  fruits.  This  was  all  the  education 
he  could  give  me,  and  it  was  enough. 

My  father  was  an  iron  worker,  and  his 
father  before  him.  My  people  had  been 
workers  in  metal  from  the  time  when  the  age 
of  farming  in  Wales  gave  way  to  the  birth  of 
modern  industries.  They  were  proud  of  their 
skill,  and  the  secrets  of  the  trade  were  passed 
from  father  to  son  as  a  legacy  of  great  value, 
and  were  never  told  to  persons  outside  the 
family.  Such  skill  meant  good  wages  when 
there  was  work.  But  there  was  not  work  all 
the  time.  Had  there  been  jobs  enough  for  all 
we  would  have  taught  our  trade  to  all.  But  in 
self-protection  we  thought  of  our  own  mouths 

30 


NO  GIFT  FROM  THE  FAIRIES 

first.  All  down  the  generations  my  family 
has  been  face  to  face  with  the  problem  of 
bread. 

My  Grandfather  Davies,  held  a  skilled  job 
at  the  blast  furnace  where  iron  was  made  for 
the  rolling  mill  in  which  my  father  was  a 
puddler.  Grandfather  Davies  had  been  to 
Russia  and  had  helped  the  Russians  build 
blast  furnaces,  in  the  days  when  they  believed 
that  work  would  make  them  wealthy.  Had 
they  stuck  to  that  truth  they  would  not  be  a 
ruined  people  to-day.  Grandfather  also  went 
to  America,  where  his  skill  helped  build  the 
first  blast  furnace  in  Maryland.  The  furnace 
fires  have  not  ceased  burning  here,  and  Rus- 
sia is  crying  for  our  steel  to  patch  her  broken 
railways.  Her  own  hills  are  full  of  iron  and 
her  hands  are  as  strong  as  ours.  Let  them 
expect  no  gift  from  life. 

Grandfather  told  my  father  that  America 
offered  a  rich  future  for  him  and  his  boys. 
"The  metal  is  there,"  he  said,  "as  it  is  in  Rus- 
sia. Russia  may  never  develop,  but  America 
will.  A  nation's  future  lies  not  in  its  re- 
sources. The  American  mind  is  right.  Go  to 
America." 

And  because  my  father  believed  that  a  good 
31 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

people  will  bring  forth  good  fruit,  he  left  his 
ancient  home  in  Wales  and  crossed  the  sea  to 
cast  his  lot  among  strangers. 

I  started  to  school  in  Wales  when  I  was 
four  years  old.  By  the  time  I  was  six  I 
thought  I  knew  more  than  my  teachers.  This 
shows  about  how  bright  I  was.  The  teachers 
had  forbidden  me  to  throw  paper  wads,  or 
spitballs.  I  thought  I  could  go  through  the 
motion  of  throwing  a  spitball  without  letting 
it  go.  But  it  slipped  and  I  threw  the  wad 
right  in  the  teacher's  eye.  I  told  him  it  was 
an  accident,  that  I  had  merely  tried  to  play 
smart  and  had  overreached  myself. 

"Being  smart  is  a  worse  fault,"  he  said, 
"than  throwing  spitballs.  I  forgive  you  for 
throwing  the  spitball,  but  I  shall  whip  the 
smart  Aleckness  out  of  you." 

He  gave  me  a  good  strapping,  and  I  went 
home  in  rebellion.  I  told  my  father.  I 
wanted  him  to  whip  the  teacher.  Father 
said: 

"I  know  the  teacher  is  a  good  man.  I 
have  known  him  for  years,  and  he  is  honest, 
he  is  just,  he  is  kind.  If  he  whipped  you,  you 
deserved  it.  You  can  not  see  it  that  way,  so 
I  am  going  to  whip  you  myself.*' 

32 


NO  GIFT  FROM  THE  FAIRIES 

He  gave  me  a  good  licking,  and,  strange  to 
say,  it  convinced  me  that  he  and  the  teacher 
were  right.  They  say  that  the  "hand  educates 
the  mind,"  and  I  can  here  testify  that  father's 
hand  set  my  mental  processes  straight.  From 
that  day  I  never  have  been  lawless  in  school 
or  out.  The  shame  of  my  father's  disapproval 
jolted  me  so  that  I  decided  ever  after  to  try 
to  merit  his  approval. 

To-day  there  is  a  theory  that  the  child 
ought  never  to  be  restrained.  Solomon  said: 
"Spare  the  rod  and  spoil  the  child."  We 
have  no  corporal  punishment  at  Mooseheart, 
but  we  have  discipline.  A  child  must  be 
restrained.  Whenever  a  crop  of  unrestrained 
youngsters  takes  the  reins  I  fear  they  will 
make  this  country  one  of  their  much  talked  of 
Utopias.  It  was  an  unrestricted  bunch  that 
made  a  "Utopia"  out  of  Russia. 

Anyhow,  my  father  lived  his  life  according 
to  his  simple  rules.  He  is  living  to-day,  a 
happy  man  in  the  cozy  home  he  won  by  his 
own  work.  The  things  he  taught  me  I  have 
seen  tested  in  his  long  life,  proved  true.  He 
never  expected  any  gift  from  life.  I  thought 
once  to  surprise  him.  I  wanted  to  buy  a  fine 
house  and  give  it  to  him.  He  wouldn't  have 

33 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

it  He  stayed  in  his  own  little  cottage.  It  was 
not  in  his  theory  of  life  that  a  house  should 
come  to  him  as  a  gift.  It  was  a  sound  theory, 
and  like  a  true  Welshman,  he  hangs  on  to  it 
to  the  end.  He  is  a  good  man,  and  the  fruits 
that  his  life  of  labor  has  brought  forth  are 
good  fruits. 


CHAPTER  IV 

SHE  SINGS  TO  HER  NEST 

FROM  my  mother  I  learned  to  sing.  She 
was  always  working  and  always  singing. 
There  were  six  children  in  the  house,  and  she 
knitted  and  sewed  and  baked  and  brewed  for 
us  all.  I  used  to  toddle  along  at  her  side  when 
she  carried  each  day  the  home-made  bread 
and  the  bottle  of  small  beer  for  father's  din- 
ner at  the  mill.  I  worshiped  my  mother,  and 
wanted  to  be  like  her.  And  that's  why  I  went 
in  for  singing.  I  have  sung  more  songs  in  my 
life  than  did  Caruso.  But  my  voice  isn't  quite 
up  to  his !  So  my  singing  has  brought  me  no 
returns  other  than  great  chunks  of  personal 
satisfaction.  The  satisfaction  was  not  shared 
by  my  hearers,  and  so  I  have  quit.  But  my 
heart  still  sings,  and  always  will.  And  this  I 
owe  to  my  mother. 

I  can  see  her  yet  in  our  tiny  Welsh  cottage, 
her  foot  on  a  wooden  cradle  rocking  a  baby, 
my  baby  brother,  her  hands  busy  with  her 

35 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

knitting,  her  voice  lifted  in  jubilant  song  for 
hours  at  a  time.  And  all  her  songs  were  songs 
of  praise. 

She  thanked  God  for  life  and  for  strong 
hands  to  labor  for  her  little  ones.  In  those 
days  furniture  was  rare,  and  few  were  the 
pieces  in  a  worker's  home.  It  took  a  dozen 
years  for  her  to  acquire  two  feather  beds. 
And  when  at  last  we  owned  two  bedsteads, 
we  rated  ourselves  pretty  rich.  We  boys  slept 
five  in  a  bed.  Why  were  bedsteads  in  those 
days  harder  to  get  than  automobiles  are 
to-day?  Because  the  wooden  age  still  lin- 
gered, the  age  of  hand  work.  And  it  took  so 
long  to  make  a  bed  by  hand  that  people  came 
into  the  world  faster  than  beds.  But  within 
my  lifetime  the  iron  mills  have  made  possi- 
ble the  dollar  bedstead.  The  working  man 
can  fill  his  house  with  beds  bought  with  the 
wage  he  earns  in  half  a  week.  This,  I  sup- 
pose, is  one  of  the  "curses  of  capitalism." 

I  have  heard  how  "the  rights  of  small  peo- 
ples" have  been  destroyed  by  capitalism;  and 
if  the  right  to  sleep  five  in  a  bed  was  prized  by 
the  little  folks,  this  privilege  has  certainly 
been  taken  away  from  them.  At  the  Moose- 
heart  School  we  are  pinched  for  sleeping 

36 


SHE  SINGS  TO  HER  NEST 

room  for  our  fast-growing  attendance.  I  sug- 
gested that,  for  the  time  being,  we  might 
double  deck  the  beds  like  the  berths  in  a 
sleeping  car.  "No,"  cried  the  superintendent. 
"Not  in  this  age  do  we  permit  the  crowding  of 
children  in  their  sleeping  quarters."  So  this 
is  the  slavery  that  capitalism  has  driven  us 
to;  we  are  forced  to  give  our  children  more 
comforts  than  we  had  ourselves.  When  I  was 
sleeping  five  in  a  bed  with  my  brothers,  there 
was  one  long  bolster  for  five  hot  little  faces. 
The  bolster  got  feverish  and  a  boy  sang  out: 
"Raise  up."  We  lifted  our  tired  heads.  "Turn 
over."  Two  boys  turned  the  bolster.  "Lie 
down."  And  we  put  our  faces  on  the  cool  side 
and  went  to  sleep. 

Those  were  not  hardships,  and  life  was 
sweet,  and  we  awoke  from  our  crowded  bed, 
like  birds  in  a  nest  awakened  by  their  moth- 
er's morning  song.  For,  as  I  have  said,  my 
mother  was  always  singing.  Her  voice  was 
our  consolation  and  delight. 

One  of  the  most  charming  recollections  of 
my  boyhood  is  that  of  my  mother  standing  at 
our  gate  with  a  lamp  in  her  hands,  sending 
one  boy  out  in  the  early  morning  darkness,  to 
his  work,  and  at  the  same  time  welcoming 

37 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

another  boy  home.  My  brother  was  on  the 
day  shift  and  I  on  the  night,  which  meant  that 
he  left  home  as  I  was  leaving  the  mills,  about 
half  past  two  in  the  morning.  On  dark  nights 
— and  they  were  all  dark  at  that  hour — my 
mother,  thinking  my  little  brother  afraid, 
would  go  with  him  to  the  gate  and,  holding  an 
old-fashioned  lamp  high  in  her  hands,  would 
sing  some  Welsh  song  while  he  trudged  out 
toward  the  mills  and  until  he  got  within  the 
radius  of  the  glare  from  the  stacks  as  they 
belched  forth  the  furnace  flames.  And  as  he 
passed  from  the  light  of  the  old  oil  burner  into 
the  greater  light  from  the  mills,  I  walked 
wearily  out  from  that  reflection  and  was 
guided  home  by  my  mother's  lamp  and  song 
on  her  lips. 

Happy  is  the  race  that  sings,  and  the  Welsh 
are  singers.  After  the  tiring  labor  in  the  mills 
we  still  had  joy  that  found  its  voice  in  song. 
When  I  was  six  years  old  I  joined  a  singing 
society.  The  whole  land  of  Wales  reechoes 
with  the  folk  songs  of  a  people  who  sing  be- 
cause they  must. 

The  memory  of  my  mother  singing,  has 
made  my  whole  life  sweet.  When  blue  days 
came  for  me,  and  hardship  almost  forced  me 

38 


SHE  SINGS  TO  HER  NEST 

to  despair,  I  turned  my  thoughts  to  her,  sing- 
ing as  she  rocked  a  cradle,  and  from  her 
spirit  my  own  heart  took  hope  again.  I  think 
the  reason  I  have  never  cared  for  drink  is 
this:  the  ease  from  mental  pain  that  other 
men  have  sought  in  alcohol,  I  always  found 
in  song. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  LOST  FEATHER  BED 

I  DIDN'T  care  very  much  for  day  school. 
The  whipping  that  I  got  there  rather  dulled 
the  flavor  of  it  for  me.  But  I  was  a  prize 
pupil  at  Sunday-school.  Father  had  gone  to 
America  and  had  saved  enough  money  to 
send  for  the  family.  I  asked  my  mother  if 
there  were  Sunday-schools  in  America,  but 
she  did  not  know.  In  those  days  we  knew 
little  about  lands  that  lay  so  far  away. 

My  boy  chums  told  me  we  were  going  to 
Pennsylvania  to  fight  Indians.  This  cheered 
me  up.  Fighting  Indians  would  be  as  much 
fun  as  going  to  Sunday-school.  A  trip  to 
America  for  such  a  purpose  was  a  sensible 
move.  But  when  mother  exploded  the  Indian 
theory  and  said  we  were  going  to  work  in  a 
rolling  mill,  I  decided  that  it  was  a  foolish 
venture. 

This  shows  how  much  my  judgment  was 
worth.  I  thought  it  foolish  to  go  to  America 
merely  to  better  our  condition.  But  I  thought 

40 


THE  LOST  FEATHER  BED 

it  a  wise  move  to  go  there  and  kill  Indians  to 
better  the  living  conditions  of  the  Americans. 
I  know  grown  men  to-day  with  the  same  kind 
of  judgment.  They  are  unwilling  to  do  the 
simple  things  that  will  save  their  own  scalps; 
but  they  are  glad  to  go  fight  imaginary  In- 
dians who  they  believe  are  scalping  the  hu- 
man race.  "Capitalism"  is  one  of  these  imag- 
inary Indians.  And  Lenine  and  Trotsky  are 
the  boy  Indian-fighters  of  the  world.  These 
poor  children  are  willing  to  go  to  any  country 
to  help  kill  the  Indian  of  capitalism.  Mean- 
while their  own  people  are  the  poorest  in  the 
world,  but  they  do  nothing  to  better  their  con- 
dition. Such  men  have  minds  that  never 
grew  up. 

When  our  household  was  dissolving  and 
we  were  packing  our  baggage  for  America,  I 
tried  to  break  up  the  plan  by  hiding  under 
the  bed.  Mother  took  the  feather  ticks  off  the 
two  bedsteads  and  bundled  them  up  to  take 
to  America.  Then  she  reached  under  the  bed- 
stead and  pulled  me  out  by  the  heels.  She 
sold  the  bedsteads  to  a  neighbor.  And  so  our 
household  ended  in  Wales  and  we  were  on 
our  way  to  establish  a  new  one  in  a  far  coun- 
try. 

41 


IRON  PUDDLER 

As  I  said  before,  the  feather  beds  were 
mother's  measure  of  wealth.  Before  she  was 
married  she  had  begun  saving  for  her  first 
feather  bed.  It  had  taken  a  long  time  to 
acquire  these  two  tickfuls  of  downy  goose 
feathers.  The  bed  is  the  foundation  of  the 
household.  It  is  there  that  the  babies  are 
born.  There  sleep  restores  the  weary  toiler 
that  he  may  rise  and  toil  anew.  And  there  at 
last  when  work  is  done,  the  old  folks  fall  into 
a  sleep  that  never  ends. 

We  traveled  steerage  to  Castle  Garden. 
Having  passed  the  immigrant  tests,  we  found 
ourselves  set  out  on  the  dock,  free  to  go  where 
we  pleased.  But  our  baggage  had  disap- 
peared. Some  one  had  made  off  with  our 
precious  feather  beds ! 

This  was  the  first  real  tragedy  of  my  moth- 
er's life.  All  the  joy  of  setting  foot  in  the  new 
land  was  turned  to  dismay.  The  stored-up 
pleasure  with  which  she  awaited  the  greeting 
of  her  husband  was  dashed  in  a  moment,  like 
sweet  water  flung  upon  the  ground.  When  I 
saw  the  anguish  in  my  mother's  face,  I  was 
sobered  to  life's  responsibilities.  The  song 
had  died  out  of  her  heart,  and  I  must  make 
it  sing  again.  While  she  was  crying  in  dis- 

42 


THE  LOST  FEATHER  BED 

traction,  I  wrapped  my  own  tearful  face  in 
her  skirts  and  prayed  to  God  that  I  might 
grow  up  in  a  day — that  He  would  make  my 
arms  strong  so  I  could  go  to  work  at  once 
earning  money  to  replace  the  lost  feather 
beds.  I  was  then  not  quite  eight  years  old.  It  s 
was  early  in  April,  1881.  Before  the  month  was 
out  I  had  found  a  job  in  the  new  country  and 
was  earning  money.  I  gave  all  my  earnings 
to  my  mother.  I  have  been  earning  money 
ever  since.  As  long  as  I  lived  at  home  I 
turned  over  all  my  wages  to  my  mother. 
When  I  went  away  I  sent  her  weekly  a  per- 
centage of  my  earnings.  This  I  have  ever 
continued  to  do. 

My  love  for  my  mother  and  her  grief  at  the 
loss  of  the  feather  beds  turned  a  careless  boy 
into  a  serious  money-maker.  This  led  to  the 
study  of  economics  and  finance.  A  man's 
destiny  is  often  made  by  trifles  light  as 
feathers. 


CHAPTER  VI 

HUNTING  FOR  LOST  CHILDREN 

THE  loss  of  our  baggage  was  only  the  be- 
ginning of  our  troubles  in  New  York.  With 
the  feather  ticks  went  also  the  money  mother 
had  got  from  selling  the  bedsteads  and  other 
furniture.  She  had  nothing  with  which  to 
buy  food  and  while  we  were  walking  the 
streets  we  smelt  the  delicious  odor  of  food 
from  the  restaurants  and  became  whining 
and  petulant.  This  was  the  first  time  mother 
had  ever  heard  her  children  crying  for  bread 
when  she  had  none  to  give  them.  The  expe- 
rience was  trying,  but  her  stout  heart  faced  it 
calmly.  In  the  Old  World,  her  folks  and 
father's  folks  had  been  rated  as  prosperous 
people.  They  always  had  good  food  in  the 
larder  and  meat  on  Sunday,  which  was  more 
than  many  had.  They  were  the  owners  of 
feather  beds,  while  many  never  slept  on  any- 
thing but  straw.  True  they  could  not  raise  the 

44 


HUNTING  FOR  LOST  CHILDREN 

passage  money  to  America  until  father  came 
and  earned  it — that  would  have  been  riches 
in  Wales.  Now  we  were  in  America  hungry 
and  penniless,  and  hard  was  the  bed  that  we 
should  lie  on. 

From  Pittsburgh  father  had  sent  us  rail- 
road tickets,  and  these  tickets  were  waiting 
for  us  at  the  railroad  office.  All  we  would 
have  to  do  would  be  to  hold  our  hunger  in 
check  until  we  should  reach  Hubbard,  Ohio, 
where  a  kinsman  had  established  a  home. 
But  while  mother  was  piloting  her  family  to 
the  depot,  two  of  the  children  got  lost.  She 
had  reached  Castle  Garden  with  six  children 
and  her  household  goods.  Now  her  goods 
were  gone  and  only  four  of  the  children  re- 
mained. My  sister  was  ten  and  I  was  eight; 
we  were  the  oldest.  The  baby,  one  year  old, 
and  the  next,  a  toddler  of  three,  mother  had 
carried  in  her  arms.  But  two  boys,  Walter 
and  David,  four  and  six  years  old,  had  got 
lost  in  the  traffic.  Mother  took  the  rest  of  us 
to  a  hotel  and  locked  us  in  a  room  while  she 
went  out  to  search  for  the  missing  ones.  For 
two  days  she  tramped  the  streets  visiting 
police  stations  and  making  inquiry  every- 
where. At  night  she  would  return  to  us  and 
45 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

report  that  she  had  found  no  trace  of  little 
Walter  and  David.  To  try  to  picture  the  mis- 
ery of  those  scenes  is  beyond  me.  I  can  only 
say  that  the  experience  instilled  in  me  a  last- 
ing terror.  The  fear  of  being  parted  from  my 
parents  and  from  my  brothers  and  sisters, 
then  implanted  in  my  soul,  has  borne  its  fruit 
in  after-life. 

Finally  mother  found  the  boys  in  a  rescue 
home  for  lost  children.  Brother  David,  curly- 
haired  and  red-cheeked,  had  so  appealed  to 
the  policeman  who  found  them  that  he  had 
made  application  to  adopt  the  boy  and  was 
about  to  take  him  to  his  own  home. 

After  finding  the  children,  mother  stood  on 
Broadway  and,  gazing  at  the  fine  buildings 
and  the  good  clothes  that  all  classes  wore  in 
America,  she  felt  her  heart  swell  with  hope. 
And  she  said  aloud:  "This  is  the  place  for 
my  boys." 

Every  one  had  treated  her  with  kindness. 
A  fellow  countryman  had  lent  her  money  to 
pay  the  hotel  bill,  telling  her  she  could  pay  it 
back  after  she  had  joined  her  husband.  And 
so  we  had  passed  through  the  gateway  of  the 
New  World  as  thousands  of  other  poor  fam- 
ilies had  done.  And  our  temporary  hard- 

46 


HUNTING  FOR  LOST  CHILDREN 

ships  had  been  no  greater  than  most  immi- 
grants encountered  in  those  days. 

I  later  learned  from  a  Bohemian  of  the 
trials  his  mother  met  with  on  her  first  days  in 
New  York.  He  told  me  that  she  and  her  three 
children,  the  smallest  a  babe  in  arms,  tramped 
the  streets  of  New  York  for  days  looking  in 
vain  for  some  one  who  could  speak  their 
native  tongue.  They  slept  at  night  in  door- 
ways, and  by  day  wandered  timid  and  terri- 
fied through  the  streets. 

"At  last  a  saloon-keeper  saw  that  we  were 
famishing,"  the  Bohemian  told  me.  "He  was 
a — a —  Oh,  what  do  you  call  them  in  your 
language?  I  can  think  of  the  Bohemian  word 
but  not  the  English." 

"What  was  he  like?"  I  asked  to  help  find 
the  word.  "Red-headed?  Tall?  Fat?" 

"No;  he  was  one  of  those  people  who 
usually  run  clothing  stores  and  are  always 
having  a  'SALE.' " 

"Jew,"  I  said. 

"Yes,  he  was  a  Jew  saloon-keeper.  He  took 
pity  on  us  and  took  us  into  his  saloon  and 
gave  us  beer,  bread  and  sausages.  We  were 
so  nearly  starved  that  we  ate  too  much  and 
our  stomachs  threw  it  up.  The  saloon-keeper 

47 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

sent  word  to  the  Humane  Society,  and  they 
came  and  put  us  on  the  train  for  Chicago, 
where  our  father  was  waiting  for  us." 

The  Bohemians  saved  from  starvation  by 
the  pity  of  a  Jewish  saloon-keeper  is  a  sample 
of  how  our  world  was  running  fifty  years  ago. 
Who  can  doubt  that  we  have  a  better  world 
to-day?  And  the  thing  that  has  made  it  bet- 
ter is  the  thing  that  Jew  exhibited,  human 
sympathy. 

When  I  found  myself  head  of  the  Labor 
Department  one  of  my  earliest  duties  was  to 
inspect  the  immigrant  stations  at  Boston  and 
New  York.  In  spite  of  complaints,  they  were 
being  conducted  to  the  letter  of  the  law;  to 
correct  the  situation  it  was  only  necessary  to 
add  sympathy  and  understanding  to  the  en- 
forcement of  the  law. 

An  American  poet  in  two  lines  told  the 
whole  truth  about  human  courage: 

"The  bravest  are  the  tenderest, 
The  loving  are  the  daring." 

Tenderness  and  human  sympathy  to  the 
alien  passing  through  Ellis  Island  does  not 
mean  that  we  are  weak,  or  that  the  unfit  alien 
is  welcome.  The  tenderer  we  treat  the  immi- 

48 


HUNTING  FOR  LOST  CHILDREN 

grant  who  seeks  our  hospitality,  the  harder 
will  we  smash  him  when  he  betrays  us. 
That's  what  "the  bravest  are  the  tenderest" 
means.  He  who  is  tenderest  toward  the 
members  of  his  household  is  bravest  in  beat- 
ing back  him  who  would  destroy  that  house. 

For  example,  I  received  a  hurry-up  call  for 
more  housing  at  Ellis  Island  in  the  early  days 
of  my  administration.  The  commissioner 
told  me  he  had  five  hundred  more  anarchists 
than  he  had  roofs  to  shelter. 

"Have  these  anarchists  been  duly  con- 
victed?" I  asked. 

He  said  they  had  been,  and  were  awaiting 
deportation. 

I  told  the  commissioner  not  to  worry  about 
finding  lodging  for  his  guests;  they  would  be 
on  their  way  before  bedtime. 

"But  there  is  no  ship  sailing  so  soon,"  he 
said.  "They  will  have  to  have  housing  till 
a  ship  sails." 

Now  this  country  has  a  shortage  of  houses 
and  a  surplus  of  ships.  There  aren't  enough 
roofs  to  house  the  honest  people,  and  there 
are  hundreds  of  ships  lying  idle.  Let  the  hon- 
est people  have  the  houses,  and  the  anarchists 
have  the  ships.  I  called  up  the  Shipping 

49 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

Board,  borrowed  a  ship,  put  the  Red  crim- 
inals aboard  and  they  went  sailing,  sailing, 
over  the  bounding  main,  and  many  a  stormy 
wind  shall  blow  "ere  Jack  come  home  again." 
On  the  other  hand  I  discovered  a  family 
that  had  just  come  to  America  and  was  about 
to  be  deported  because  of  a  technicality.  The 
family  consisted  of  a  father  and  mother  and 
four  small  children.  The  order  of  deporta- 
tion had  been  made  and  the  family  had  been 
put  aboard  a  ship  about  to  sail.  I  learned 
that  the  children  were  healthy  and  right- 
minded;  the  mother  was  of  honest  working 
stock  with  a  faith  in  God  and  not  in  anarchy. 
I  had  been  one  of  such  a  family  entering  this 
port  forty  years  ago.  Little  did  I  dream  then 
that  I  would  ever  be  a  member  of  a  Presi- 
dent's Cabinet  with  power  to  wipe  away  this 
woman's  tears  and  turn  her  heart's  sorrow- 
ing into  a  song  of  joy.  I  wrote  the  order  of 
admission,  and  the  family  was  taken  from 
the  departing  ship  just  before  it  sailed.  I  told 
the  mother  that  the  baby  in  her  arms  might  be 
secretary  of  labor  forty  years  hence. 


CHAPTER  VII 

HARD  SLEDDING  IN  AMERICA 

IT  HAD  been  our  plan  to  go  from  New  York 
to  Pittsburgh,  but  the  mill  that  father  was 
working  in  had  shut  down.  And  so  he  had 
sent  us  tickets  to  Hubbard,  Ohio,  where  his 
brother  had  a  job  as  a  muck  roller — the  man 
who  takes  the  bloom  from  the  squeezer  and 
throws  it  into  the  rollers.  That's  all  I  can  tell 
you  now.  In  later  chapters  I  shall  take  you 
into  a  rolling  mill,  and  show  you  how  we 
worked.  I  believe  I  am  the  first  puddler  that 
ever  described  his  job,  for  I  have  found  no 
book  by  a  puddler  in  any  American  library. 
But  I  wanted  to  explain  here  that  a  muck 
roller  is  not  a  muck  raker,  but  a  worker  in 
raw  iron. 

When  we  boarded  the  train  for  Ohio, 
mother  had  nothing  to  look  after  except  the 
six  children.  When  the  porter  asked  her 
where  her  baggage  was,  she  smiled  sadly  and 
said  that  was  a  question  for  a  wiser  head  than 

51 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

hers  to  answer.  She  was  glad  enough  to  have 
all  her  babies  safe.  Everything  we  owned 
was  on  our  backs.  Our  patient  father  had 
toiled  for  months  in  Pittsburgh  and  had  sent 
us  nearly  every  cent  to  pay  our  transportation 
from  the  Old  World.  Now  he  was  out  of  a 
job,  and  we  were  coming  to  him  without  as 
much  as  a  bag  of  buns  in  our  hands. 

Before  leaving  New  York,  I  want  to  tell 
what  kind  of  city  it  was  in  those  days. 

In  a  recent  magazine  article  a  writer  pic- 
turing our  arrival  at  Castle  Garden  said  that 
we  "climbed  the  hill  into  Broadway  and 
gazed  around  at  the  highest  buildings  we  had 
ever  seen."  But  there  were  no  tall  buildings 
in  New  York  at  that  time.  The  spires  of 
Trinity  Church  and  St.  Paul's  towered  above 
everything.  And  we  had  seen  such  churches 
in  the  Old  Country.  Brooklyn  Bridge  had 
just  been  built  and  it  overtopped  the  town 
like  a  syrup  pitcher  over  a  plate  of  pancakes. 
The  tallest  business  blocks  were  five  or  six 
stories  high,  and  back  in  Wales  old  Lord 
Tredegar,  the  chief  man  of  our  shire,  lived  in 
a  great  castle  that  was  as  fine  as  any  of  them. 

The  steel  that  made  New  York  a  city  in  the 
sky  was  wrought  in  my  own  time.  My  father 

52 


HARD  SLEDDING  IN  AMERICA 

and  his  sons  helped  puddle  the  iron  that  has 
braced  this  city's  rising  towers.  A  town  that 
crawled  now  stands  erect.  And  we  whose 
backs  were  bent  above  the  puddling  hearths 
know  how  it  got  its  spine.  A  mossy  town  of 
wood  and  stone  changed  in  my  generation  to 
a  towering  city  of  glittering  glass  and  steel. 
"All  of  which" — I  can  say  in  the  words  of  the 
poet — "all  of  which  I  saw  and  part  of 
which  I  was." 

The  train  that  was  taking  us  to  Ohio  was 
an  Erie  local,  and  the  stops  were  so  numerous 
that  we  thought  we  should  never  get  there. 
A  man  on  the  train  bought  ginger  bread  and 
pop  and  gave  us  kids  a  treat.  It  has  been  my 
practise  ever  since  to  do  likewise  for  alien 
youngsters  that  I  meet  on  trains. 

When  we  reached  Hubbard,  father  met  us 
and  took  us  to  an  uncle's.  We  did  not  stop 
to  wash  the  grime  of  travel  from  our  faces 
until  after  we  had  filled  our  stomachs.  Once 
refreshed  with  food,  our  religion  returned  to 
us,  in  the  desire  to  be  clean  and  to  establish 
a  household.  I  learned  then  that  food  is  the 
first  thing  in  the  world.  Cleanliness  may  be 
next  to  godliness,  but  food  is  ahead  of  them 
all,  and  without  food  man  loses  his  cleanli- 

53 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

ness,  godliness  and  everything  else  worth 
having.  When  I  wish  to  sound  out  a  man, 
I  ask  him  if  he  has  ever  been  hungry.  If  I 
find  he  has  never  missed  a  meal  in  his  life,  I 
know  his  education  has  been  neglected.  For 
I  believe  that  experience  is  the  foremost 
teacher.  I  have  learned  something  from 
every  experience  I  ever  had,  and  I  hold  that 
Providence  has  been  kind  to  me  in  favoring 
me  with  a  lot  of  rather  tough  adventures. 

Our  hardships  on  entering  America  taught 
me  sympathy  and  filled  me  with  a  desire  to 
help  others.  I  have  heard  aliens  say  that 
America  had  not  treated  them  with  hospital- 
ity, and  that  this  had  made  them  bitter,  and 
now  these  aliens  would  take  revenge  by  tear- 
ing down  America.  This  is  a  lie  that  can  not 
fool  me.  My  hardships  did  not  turn  me  bit- 
ter. And  I  know  a  thousand  others  who  had 
harder  struggles  than  I.  And  none  of  them 
showed  the  yellow  streak.  The  Pilgrim 
Fathers  landed  in  the  winter  when  there  were 
no  houses.  Half  of  them  perished  from  hard- 
ship in  a  single  year.  Did  they  turn  anarch- 
ists? 

The  man  who  says  that  hard  sledding  in 
America  made  a  yellow  cur  out  of  him  fools 

54 


HARD  SLEDDING  IN  AMERICA 

no  one.  He  was  born  a  yellow  cur.  Hard 
sledding  in  America  produced  the  man  who 
said:  "With  malice  toward  none;  with  char- 
ity for  all." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

MY  FIRST  REGULAR  JOB 

WE  STAYED  a  week  with  father's  brother  in 
Hubbard.  Then  we  went  to  Sharon,  Pennsyl- 
vania, where  father  had  a  temporary  job.  A 
Welshman,  knowing  his  desperate  need  of 
money,  let  him  take  his  furnace  for  a  few 
days  and  earn  enough  money  to  move  on  to 
Pittsburgh.  There  father  found  a  job  again, 
but  mother  was  dissatisfied  with  the  crowded 
conditions  in  Pittsburgh.  She  wanted  to  bring 
up  her  boys  amid  open  fields. 

In  those  days  the  air  was  black  with  soot 
and  the  crowded  quarters  where  the  workers 
lived  offered  no  room  for  gardens.  Mother 
wanted  sunlight  and  green  grass  such  as  we 
had  about  Tredegar.  There  Lord  Tredegar 
had  his  beautiful  castle  in  the  midst  of  a  park. 
On  certain  days  this  great  park  was  open  to 
the  villagers,  and  the  children  came  to  picnic, 
and  Lord  Tredegar  gave  them  little  cakes  and 

56 


MY  FIRST  REGULAR  JOB 

tea  in  doll-size  cups.  Doubtless  he  looked 
upon  us  as  "my  people." 

But  the  lords  of  steel  in  Pittsburgh  were  too 
new  at  the  game  to  practise  the  customs  of 
the  nobility  in  beautifying  their  surroundings. 
The  mills  had  made  things  ugly  and  the  place 
was  not  what  mother  thought  it  ought  to  be 
for  bringing  up  children.  So  father  took  us 
back  to  Sharon,  and  there  we  had  sunlight 
and  grass  and  trees.  We  rented  a  neat  little 
company-house  with  a  big  garden  in  the  rear, 
where  we  raised  enough  potatoes  to  supply 
our  table.  There  were  window  boxes  filled 
with  morning-glories,  and  lilacs  grew  in  the 
yard.  The  company  had  planted  those  lilacs 
to  nourish  the  souls  of  the  worker's  children, 
They  gave  me  joy,  and  that  is  why  the  Moose- 
heart  grounds  are  filled  with  lilac  bushes. 

As  soon  as  we  landed  in  Sharon  I  started 
out  to  earn  money.  Those  feather  beds  were 
on  my  mind  and  I  couldn't  rest  easy  until  we 
should  replace  them.  Neither  could  the  rest 
of  the  family.  I  have  often  told  how  I  scraped 
up  some  capital  and  invested  it  in  a  shoe-shin- 
ing outfit.  Nearly  every  traveling  man  who 
came  to  the  hotel  allowed  me  to  shine  his 
shoes.  The  townsfolk  let  their  shoes  go  gray 

57 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

all  week,  but  the  gay  commercial  travelers  all 
were  dudes  and  dressed  like  Sunday  every 
day.  They  brought  the  new  fashions  to  town 
and  were  looked  upon  as  high-toned  fellows. 
Their  flashy  get-up  caught  the  girls,  which 
made  the  town-boys  hate  them.  But  I  liked 
them  very  well  because  they  brought  me 
revenue.  "Where  a  man's  treasure  is,  there 
is  his  heart  also,"  says  the  proverb,  and  my 
experience  proved  it  true.  On  my  first  visit 
to  the  hotel  I  got  acquainted  with  the  land- 
lord and  he  put  me  on  his  pay-roll.  Behind 
the  hotel  was  a  cow  pen  where  the  milk  for 
the  guests  was  drawn  fresh  from  the  cows. 
The  cows  had  to  be  driven  to  a  pasture  in  the 
morning  and  back  at  night.  I  got  a  dollar  and 
a  quarter  a  month  for  driving  the  cows.  And 
so  I  had  found  a  paying  job  within  thirty 
days  after  landing  in  America.  The  cost  of 
pasturage  was  a  dollar  a  month  for  each  cow. 
That  was  less  than  four  cents  a  day  for  cow 
feed  to  produce  two  gallons  of  milk,  or  about 
two  cents  a  gallon.  The  wages  of  the  girls 
who  milked  them  and  my  wages  for  driving 
them  amounted  to  three  cents  a  gallon.  In 
other  words,  the  cost  of  labor  in  getting  the 
milk  from  the  cows  more  than  doubled  the 

58 


cost  of  the  milk.  This  was  my  first  lesson  in 
political  economy.  I  learned  that  labor  costs 
are  the  chief  item  in  fixing  the  price  of  any- 
thing. 

The  less  labor  used  in  producing  milk,  the 
cheaper  the  milk  will  be.  The  reason  wages 
were  high  in  America  was  because  America 
was  the  land  of  labor-saving  machinery. 
Little  labor  was  put  on  any  product,  and  so 
the  product  was  cheap,  like  the  landlord's 
milk.  In  the  iron  industry,  for  instance,  the 
coal  mines  and  iron  ore  lay  near  the  mills, 
as  the  landlord's  pasture  was  near  his  hotel. 
To  bring  the  coal  and  ore  to  the  blast  furnaces 
took  little  labor,  just  as  my  driving  in  the 
cows  cost  the  landlord  but  four  cents  a  day. 
Next  to  the  blast  furnaces  stood  the  mixer,  the 
Bessemer  open  hearth  furnaces,  the  ingot 
stripper  building,  the  soaking  pits  and  then 
the  loading  yards  with  their  freight  cars 
where  the  finished  product  in  the  form  of 
wire,  rails  or  sky-scraper  steel  is  shipped 
away. 

Because  the  landlord  had  his  cows  milked 
at  the  back  door  of  his  hotel  the  milk  was 
still  warm  when  it  was  carried  into  his 
kitchen.  And  so  the  steel  mills  are  grouped 

59 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

so  closely  that  a  single  heat  sometimes  carries 
the  steel  from  the  Bessemer  hearth  through 
all  the  near-by  machines  until  it  emerges  as  a 
finished  product  and  is  loaded  on  the  railroad 
cars  while  it  is  still  warm.  It  was  this  saving 
of  labor  and  fuel  that  made  American  steel 
the  cheapest  steel  in  the  world.  And  that's 
why  the  wages  of  steel  and  iron  workers  in 
America  are  the  highest  in  the  world. 

Father  was  in  the  mills  getting  these  good 
wages,  though  no  puddler  was  ever  paid  for 
all  the  work  he  does,  and  all  of  us  young 
Davises  were  eager  to  grow  up  so  that  we 
could  learn  the  trade  and  get  some  of  that 
good  money  ourselves.  My  hands  itched  for 
labor,  and  I  wanted  nothing  better  than  to  be 
big  enough  to  put  a  finger  in  this  industry 
that  was  building  up  America  before  my  very 
eyes.  I  have  always  been  a  doer  and  a  build- 
er, it  was  in  my  blood  and  the  blood  of  my 
tribe,  as  it  is  born  in  the  blood  of  beavers. 
When  I  meet  a  man  who  is  a  loafer  and  a 
destroyer,  I  know  he  is  alien  to  me.  I  fear 
him  and  all  his  breed.  The  beaver  is  a  build- 
er and  the  rat  is  a  destroyer;  yet  they  both 
belong  to  the  rodent  race.  The  beaver  har- 
vests his  food  in  the  summer;  he  builds  a 

60 


MY  FIRST  REGULAR  JOB 

house  and  stores  that  food  for  the  winter. 
The  rat  sneaks  to  the  food  stores  of  others: 
he  eats  what  he  wants  and  ruins  the  rest  and 
then  runs  and  hides  in  his  hole.  He  lives  in 
the  builder's  house,  but  he  is  not  a  builder. 
He  undermines  that  house;  he  is  a  rat. 

Some  men  are  by  nature  beavers,  and  some 
are  rats;  yet  they  all  belong  to  the  human 
race.  The  people  that  came  to  this  country 
in  the  early  days  were  of  the  beaver  type  and 
they  built  up  America  because  it  was  in  their 
nature  to  build.  Then  the  rat-people  began 
coming  here,  to  house  under  the  roof  that 
others  built.  And  they  try  to  undermine  and 
ruin  it  because  it  is  in  their  nature  to  destroy. 
They  call  themselves  anarchists. 

A  civilization  rises  when  the  beaver-men 
outnumber  the  rat-men.  When  the  rat-men 
get  the  upper  hand  the  civilization  falls.  Then 
the  rats  turn  and  eat  one  another  and  that 
is  the  end.  Beware  of  breeding  rats  in 
America. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  SCATTERED  FAMILY 

FOR  three  years  after  we  came  to  Sharon  I 
went  to  school,  and  in  my  spare  time  worked 
at  my  shoe  shining  and  other  odd  jobs.  We 
had  bought  feather  beds  again  and  our  little 
home  was  a  happy  one.  By  hanging  around 
the  depot  spotting  traveling  men  who  needed 
a  shine,  or  their  grips  carried,  I  got  ac- 
quainted with  the  telegraph  agent.  And  so 
I  got  the  job  of  telegraph  messenger  boy. 

Few  telegrams  were  sent,  and  then  only 
when  somebody  died.  So  whenever  I  carried 
a  telegram  I  knew  that  I  was  the  bearer  of 
bad  news.  Accidents  happened  in  the  mines 
and  iron  mills.  And  when  a  man  was  killed, 
it  often  meant  his  wife  and  babies  would  face 
hunger,  for  the  jobs  were  not  the  kind  for 
women  and  children;  muscular  men  were 
needed.  Aside  from  the  occupation  of  house- 
wife, there  was  nothing  for  a  woman  to  do  in 
those  days  except  to  take  in  washing  or  sew- 
ing. 


THE  SCATTERED  FAMILY 

^ 

Of  the  many  death  messages  that  I  bore  to 
the  workers'  homes  in  Sharon,  few  found  a 
home  that  was  able  to  last  a  day  after  the 
burial  of  the  bread-winner.  He  had  failed  to 
make  provision  for  such  an  accident, — no 
savings  in  the  bank,  no  life  insurance.  As 
soon  as  the  worker  was  stricken  his  children 
were  at  the  mercy  of  the  world.  I  saw  so 
much  of  this,  that  the  pity  of  it  entered  deep 
into  my  boy-heart  and  never  afterward  could 
I  forget  it. 

I  talked  with  the  station  agent,  the  banker 
and  the  hotel  keeper.  The  station  agent  had 
money  in  the  bank  which  he  was  saving  to 
educate  his  boy  to  be  a  telegrapher.  He  also 
carried  life  insurance.  "If  I  should  die,"  he 
said,  "my  wife  would  collect  enough  insur- 
ance to  start  a  boarding-house.  My  boy 
would  have  money  enough  to  learn  a  trade. 
Then  he  could  get  as  good  a  job  as  I  have." 
The  hotel  keeper  told  me  that  if  he  should  die 
his  wife  could  run  the  hotel  just  the  same,  it 
being  free  of  debt  and  earning  enough  money 
so  that  she  could  hire  a  man  to  do  the  work 
he  had  been  doing.  The  banker  owned  bonds 
and  if  he  died  the  bonds  would  go  right  on 
earning  money  for  his  children. 

63 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

These  men  were  capitalists  and  their  future 
was  provided  for.  Most  of  the  mill-workers 
were  only  laborers,  they  had  no  capital  and 
the  minute  their  labors  ended  they  were  done 
for.  The  workers  were  kind-hearted,  and 
when  a  fellow  was  killed  in  the  mill  or  died 
of  sickness  they  went  to  his  widow  and  with 
tears  in  their  eyes  reached  into  their  pockets 
and  gave  her  what  cash  they  had.  I  never 
knew  a  man  to  hang  back  when  a  collection 
for  a  widow  was  being  taken.  Contributions 
sometimes  were  as  high  as  five  dollars.  It 
made  a  heartrending  scene:  the  broken  body 
of  a  once  strong  man  lying  under  a  white 
sheet;  the  children  playing  around  and  laugh- 
ing (if  they  were  too  young  to  know  what  it 
meant) ;  the  mother  frantic  with  the  thought 
that  her  brood  was  now  homeless;  and  the  big 
grimy  workers  wiping  their  tears  with  a  rough 
hand  and  putting  silver  dollars  into  a  hat. 

With  this  money  and  the  last  wages  of  the 
dead  man,  the  widow  paid  for  the  funeral  and 
sometimes  bought  a  ticket  to  the  home  of 
some  relative  who  would  give  her  her  "keep" 
in  return  for  her  labor  in  the  house.  Other 
relatives  might  each  take  one  of  the  children 
,  "to  raise,"  who,  thus  scattered,  seldom  if  ever 
j  64 


THE  SCATTERED  FAMILY 

got  together  again.  When  I  became  an  iron 
worker  there  were  several  fellows  in  our 
union  who  didn't  know  whether  they  had  a 
relative  on  earth.  One  of  them,  Bill  Will- 
iams, said  to  me:  "Jim,  no  wonder  you're 
always  happy.  You've  got  so  many  brothers 
that  there's  always  two  of  you  together, 
whether  it's  playing  in  the  band,  on  the  ball 
nine  or  working  at  the  furnace.  If  I  had  a 
brother  around  I  wouldn't  get  the  blues  the 
way  I  do.  I've  got  some  brothers  somewhere 
in  this  world,  but  I'll  probably  never  know 
where  they  are." 

Then  he  told  how  his  father  had  died  when 
he  was  three  years  old.  There  were  several 
children,  and  they  were  taken  by  relatives. 
He  was  sent  to  his  grandmother,  whose  name 
was  Williams.  That  was  not  his  name. 
Before  he  was  seven  both  his  grandparents 
died  and  he  was  taken  by  a  farmer  who  called 
him  Bill.  The  farmer  did  not  send  him  to 
school  and  he  grew  up  barely  able  to  write 
his  name,  Will  Williams,  which  was  not  his 
real  name.  He  didn't  even  know  what  his 
real  name  was. 

"Probably  my  brothers  are  alive,"  he  said, 
"but  what  chance  have  I  got  of  ever  finding 

65 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

them  when  I  don't  know  what  the  family 
name  is.  Maybe  they've  all  got  new  names 
now  like  I  have.  Maybe  I've  met  my  own 
brothers  and  we  never  knew  it.  I'd  give 
everything  in  the  world,  if  I  had  it,  to  look 
into  a  man's  face  and  know  that  he  was  my 
brother.  It  must  be  a  wonderful  feeling." 

These  things  are  the  tragedies  of  the  poor. 
And  although  such  a  misfortune  never  hap- 
pened to  me,  this  problem  stared  me  in  the 
face  when  I  began  carrying  those  fatal  tele- 
grams. I  tackled  the  problem  with  a  boyish 
mind.  I  soon  resolved  it  into  these  proposi- 
tions: 

When  a  laborer  dies  his  little  children  are 
scattered  to  the  winds.  Brothers  and  sisters 
may  never  see  one  another  again. 

When  a  man  with  property  dies,  his  chil- 
dren are  kept  together.  Their  future  is  made 
safe  by  the  property. 

Labor  provides  for  to-day.  Property  pro- 
vides for  to-morrow. 

That  truth  was  driven  into  my  mind  when 
I  saw  one  family  after  another  scattered  by 
the  death  of  a  laborer.  A  merchant  in  Sharon 
died,  and  his  children,  after  the  funeral,  kept 
right  on  going  to  school.  There  was  no  doubt- 

66 


THE  SCATTERED  FAMILY 

ing  the  truth  of  my  rule:  Labor  makes  the 
present  day  safe — but  the  present  day  only. 
Capital  safeguards  the  future. 

From  that  day  on,  I  argued  that  we  should 
buy  a  home  and  save  a  little  every  day  for 
capital.  It  was  our  duty  thus  to  protect  our- 
selves, should  our  father  die,  against  being 
scattered  among  strangers. 


CHAPTER  X 

MELODRAMA   BECOMES    COMEDY 

EVERY  race  gets  a  nickname  in  America.  A 
Frenchman  is  a  "frog,**  a  negro  a  "coon"  and 
a  Welshman  a  "goat."  All  the  schoolboys 
who  were  not  Welsh  delighted  in  teasing  us 
by  applying  the  uncomplimentary  nickname. 
This  once  resulted  at  the  Sharon  opera-house, 
in  turning  a  dramatic  episode  into  a  howling 
farce. 

I  was  acting  as  a  super  in  the  sensational 
drama  She,  by  H.  Rider  Haggard.  Two  Eng- 
lishmen were  penetrating  the  mysterious 
jungles  of  Africa,  and  I  was  their  native  guide 
and  porter.  They  had  me  all  blacked  up  like 
a  negro  minstrel,  but  this  wasn't  a  funny 
show,  it  was  a  drama  of  mystery  and  terror. 
While  I  was  guiding  the  English  travelers 
through  the  jungle  of  the  local  stage,  we 
penetrated  into  the  land  of  the  wall-eyed  can- 
nibals. 

The  cannibals  captured  me  and  prepared 
68 


MELODRAMA  BECOMES  COMEDY 

to  eat  me  in  full  view  of  the  audience  while 
the  Englishmen  behind  the  trees  looked  on  in 
horror.  The  cannibals,  who  were  also  supers 
led  by  an  actor  of  the  "troupe,"  set  up  a  hot 
pot  to  boil  my  bones  in.  I  was  bound  hand 
and  foot,  while  the  cannibals,  armed  with 
spears,  danced  around  me  in  a  heathen  cere- 
mony, chanting  a  voodoo  chant  and  reciting 
a  rigmarole  by  which  cannibals  are  supposed 
to  make  their  human  feast  on  a  sacred  rite. 
As  they  danced  about  me  in  a  circle,  they 
sang: 

"Is  it  an  ox?  Him-yah,  him-yah."  And 
they  jabbed  their  spears  into  me.  Some  of 
the  supers  jabbed  me  pretty  hard,  among 
them  Babe  Durgon,  who  delighted  in  torment- 
ing me. 

"Is  it  a  sheep?  Him-yah,  him-yah."  Again 
they  jabbed  me,  and  I  was  so  mad  I  was  cuss- 
ing them  under  my  breath. 

"Is  it  a  pig?    Him-yah,  him-yah." 

The  audience  was  breathless  with  tense  ex- 
citement. 

"Is  it  a  goat?" 

The  entire  gallery  broke  into  a  whirlwind 
roar:  "Yes!  yes!  He's  a  goat." 

Laughter  rocked  the  audience.  They  all 
69 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

knew  I  was  Welsh  and  saw  the  joke.  The 
horror  and  suspense  had  been  so  great  that 
when  it  broke  with  comic  relief  the  house  was 
really  hysterical.  It  stopped  the  show. 

I  played  supernumerary  parts  in  many 
shows  that  winter  including  Richard  111  and 
other  Shakespearean  plays.  At  the  battle  of 
Bosworth  field  where  Richard  cries:  "A 
horse,  a  horse;  my  kingdom  for  a  horse,"  the 
supers  in  the  army  were  clattering  their 
swords  on  the  opposing  shields  in  a  great  hub- 
bub and  shouting,  "Hay,  hay  hay!"  I  was  of 
a  thrifty  turn  of  mind,  and  said:  "Hold  on, 
boys.  Don't  order  too  much  hay  until  we 
see  whether  he  gets  the  horse  or  not." 

A  hypnotist  came  to  the  opera-house  and 
I  volunteered  to  be  hypnotized.  He  couldn't 
hypnotize  me.  I  felt  rather  bad  about  it.  I 
was  out  of  the  show.  Later  I  learned  that  all 
of  the  "Perfessor's"  best  subjects  came  with 
him  under  salary,  and  the  local  boys  who 
made  good  were  faking  like  the  professionals. 
The  whole  thing  was  a  cheat  and  I  had  not 
caught  on.  I  was  too  serious-minded  to  think 
of  faking.  But  several  of  the  boys  took  to  it 
naturally,  and  among  them  was  Babe  Durgon, 
the  bully.  He  could  be  hypnotized  and  I 

70 


MELODRAMA  BECOMES  COMEDY 

couldn't.  But  several  years  later  I  had  the 
satisfaction  of  "hypnotizing"  him  myself,  as 
I  told  about  in  my  first  chapter. 

Although  I  always  regarded  myself  as  a 
humorist,  the  impression  I  made  on  my  com- 
rades was  that  of  a  serious  and  religious  fel- 
low. I  quoted  the  Bible  to  them  so  often  that 
they  nicknamed  me  "the  Welsh  Parson." 

I  was  the  general  errand  boy  of  the  town. 
Everybody  knew  me.  And  when  there  was 
a  job  of  passing  hand-bills  for  the  opera- 
house,  or  ringing  bells  for  auction  sales,  I 
always  got  the  job.  Every  nickel  that  rolled 
loose  in  the  town  landed  in  my  pocket  and  I 
took  it  home  to  mother.  Mother  was  my  idol 
and  what  she  said  was  law.  One  night  I  heard 
the  band  playing  and  started  down-town. 
Mother  told  me  to  be  sure  to  be  in  bed  by 
nine  o'clock.  I  found  that  a  minstrel  show 
had  been  thrown  out  of  its  regular  route  by 
a  flood  and  was  playing  our  town  unex- 
pectedly. The  stage  hands  knew  me  and 
passed  me  in.  I  was  seeing  a  high-priced  show 
for  nothing.  But  when  it  came  nine  o'clock, 
I  went  home.  I  told  my  mother  that  I  had 
walked  out  of  the  most  gorgeous  minstrel 
show.  She  asked  me  why  and  I  told  her  be- 

71 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

cause  she  wanted  me  to  be  in  bed  by  nine 
o'clock. 

"Why,  Jimmy,"  she  said,  "I  wanted  you  to 
be  in  bed  so  you  wouldn't  be  in  bad  company. 
It  would  have  been  all  right  for  you  to  have 
stayed  at  the  minstrel  show.  All  I  want  to 
know  is  that  you  are  in  good  company." 

I  guess  mother  thought  I  was  a  bit  soft,  but 
I  had  seen  the  best  part  of  the  show,  as  in 
those  days  the  curtain  rose  at  seven  forty-five. 

Minstrel  shows  were  the  greatest  delight  of 
my  youth.  I  learned  to  dance  and  could  sing 
all  the  songs  and  get  off  the  jokes.  Dupree  & 
Benedict's  were  the  first  minstrels  I  ever  saw. 
I  marched  in  their  parade  and  carried  the 
drum.  George  Evans  (Honey  Boy)  was  a 
life-long  friend.  We  were  born  within  three 
miles  of  each  other  in  Wales  and  came  to  this 
country  at  about  the  same  time. 


CHAPTER  XI 

KEEPING  OPEN  HOUSE 

OUR  little  four-room  company-house  in 
Sharon  had  its  doors  open  to  the  wayfarer. 
There  was  always  some  newcomer  from 
Wales,  looking  for  a  stake  in  America,  who 
had  left  his  family  in  Wales.  Usually  he  was 
a  distant  kinsman,  but  whether  a  blood  rela- 
tion or  not,  we  regarded  all  Welshmen  as  be- 
longing to  our  clan.  Our  house  was  small, 
but  we  crowded  into  the  corners  and  made 
room  for  another.  His  food  and  bed  were 
free  as  long  as  he  stayed.  We  helped  him 
find  a  job,  and  then  he  thanked  us  for  our 
hospitality  and  went  out  of  our  house  with 
our  blessings  upon  him.  This  form  of  com- 
munity life  was  the  social  law  in  all  the  cot- 
tages of  the  Welsh. 

It  was  like  the  law  of  tobacco  among 
Americans.  Tobacco  has  always  been  "na- 
tionalized" in  America,  and  so  have  matches. 
Your  pipe  is  your  own,  but  your  tobacco  and 

73 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

matches  belong  to  everybody.  So  it  was  with 
food  and  shelter  in  the  Welsh  colony  at  Shar- 
on. Each  newcomer  from  the  Old  Country 
was  entitled  to  free  bed  and  board  until  he 
could  get  a  job  in  the  mills.  When  he  found 
a  job  his  money  was  his;  we  never  expected 
him  to  pay  for  the  food  he  had  eaten  any 
more  than  you  would  expect  pay  for  the 
tobacco  and  matches  you  furnish  your 
friends. 

These  sojourners  in  our  family  were  heroes 
to  us  kids.  They  brought  us  news  from  the 
Old  World,  and  each  one  had  tricks  or  tales 
that  were  new  to  us.  One  man  showed  us 
that  we  could  put  our  hand  on  the  bottom  of 
a  boiling  teakettle  and  find  the  bottom  cool. 
Another  told  us  about  milking  goats  in  the 
Old  Country.  We  asked  him  how  much  milk 
a  goat  would  give.  He  said,  "About  a  thim- 
bleful," and  we  thought  him  very  witty. 
Another  had  shipped  as  an  "able  seaman"  to 
get  his  passage  to  America.  When  out  at  sea 
it  was  discovered  he  didn't  know  one  rope 
from  another.  During  a  storm  he  and  the 
mate  had  a  terrible  fight.  "The  sea  was 
sweeping  the  deck  and  we  were  ordered  to 
reef  a  shroud.  I  didn't  know  how,  and  the 

74 


KEEPING  OPEN  HOUSE 

mate  called  me  a  name  that  no  Welshman 
will  stand  for.  I  thought  we  were  all  going  to 
be  drowned  anyhow,  and  I  might  as  well  die 
with  my  teeth  in  his  neck.  So  I  flew  into  him 
and  we  fought  like  wildcats.  I  couldn't  kill 
him  and  he  couldn't  kill  me.  And  the  sea 
didn't  sweep  us  overboard.  But  after  that 
fight  the  mate  let  me  do  as  I  pleased  for  the 
rest  of  the  voyage." 

Knowing  how  strong  are  the  arms  of  an 
iron  worker  and  what  a  burly  man  is  a  ship's 
mate,  we  realized  that  the  fight  must  have 
been  a  struggle  between  giants. 

We  were  fluent  readers,  much  better  read- 
ers than  our  parents,  but  we  had  no  books. 
We  took  the  Youth's  Companion,  and  it  was 
the  biggest  thing  in  our  lives.  Every  week  we 
were  at  the  post-office  when  the  Companion 
was  due.  We  could  hardly  wait,  we  were  so 
eager  to  see  wrhat  happened  next  in  the  "con- 
tinued" story.  Surely  so  good  a  children's 
paper  as  the  Youth's  Companion  could  never 
be  found  in  any  country  but  America.  Ameri- 
ca was  the  land  of  children,  and  that's  why 
parents  broke  their  old-home  ties  and  made 
the  hard  pilgrimage  to  America;  it  was  for 
the  benefit  of  their  children. 

75 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

Our  home  was  a  happy  one,  for  we  children 
were  fond  of  one  another  and  all  loved  the 
father  and  mother  who  worked  so  hard  for 
us.  We  were  the  first  to  realize  that  our 
home  was  insecure,  upheld  by  a  single  prop, 
our  father's  labor.  The  breaking  of  his  right 
arm  might  have  broken  up  our  home.  We 
wanted  to  acquire  property  so  that  mother 
would  be  safe.  For  we  knew  that  God  was 
a  just  God.  He  did  not  ordain  that  one  class 
should  labor  and  be  insecure  while  another 
class  owned  property  and  was  safe.  I  learned 
that  the  banker,  the  hotel  keeper  and  the  sta- 
tion agent  had  all  been  poor  boys  like  myself. 
They  started  with  nothing  but  their  hands  to 
labor  with.  They  had  worked  hard  and  saved 
a  part  of  their  wages,  and  this  had  given  them 
"a  start."  The  hotel  keeper  had  been  a  hack 
driver.  He  slept  in  the  haymow  of  a  livery 
stable.  He  had  to  meet  the  train  that  came 
at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning.  No  other  man 
was  willing  to  have  his  sleep  broken  at  such 
an  hour.  He  hated  to  lose  the  sleep,  but  he 
wanted  the  money.  At  the  end  of  four  years 
he  had  saved  a  thousand  dollars.  He  wanted 
to  buy  a  hotel  but  needed  more  money.  The 
banker,  knowing  he  was  a  stayer,  lent  him  the 

76 


KEEPING  OPEN  HOUSE 

cash  he  needed,  and  so  he  became  a  property 
owner.  He  no  longer  slept  in  the  haymow 
but  had  a  room  of  his  own  and  other  rooms 
to  rent  to  the  "high-toned  traveling  men." 

From  this  I  learned  that  laborers  became 
capitalists  when  they  saved  their  money. 
Right  then  I  made  up  my  mind  that  some  day 
mother  would  own  a  home.  If  father  couldn't 
save  the  money  to  buy  it,  I  would.  Years 
afterward  a  wealthy  Pittsburgh  man  who  had 
just  built  a  fine  residence  in  the  fashionable 
section  of  that  town  found  himself  in  diffi- 
culties and  unable  to  occupy  the  house.  He 
offered  it  to  me  at  a  bargain.  So  I  took  my 
parents  to  this  place  and  told  them  it  was  to 
be  theirs.  Mother  declared  that  she  certainly 
never  dreamed  of  having  a  "magnificent 
home  like  this."  She  seemed  to  be  greatly 
pleased.  But  now  I  know  that  the  sparkle  in 
her  eyes  was  for  me.  Her  boy  had  done  all 
this  for  his  mother.  If  I  had  given  her  a  pair 
of  shoes  that  pinched  her  feet,  she  would 
have  worn  them  smiling  for  my  sake.  Father 
looked  out  the  windows  at  the  neighboring 
residences.  "Who  lives  there?"  he  asked. 
"And  who  lives  yonder?"  I  told  him  the 
great  names  of  his  neighbors. 

77 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

"Son,"  he  said,  "you  do  not  wish  to  lock 
your  parents  up  in  a  prison,  do  you?" 

Then  he  explained:  "We  do  not  know 
these  people.  We  are  too  old  to  make  new 
friends.  We  would  never  be  at  ease  here,  we 
would  be  lonely.  We  like  the  little  home 
that  we  bought  with  our  own  savings.  It  has 
become  a  part  of  ourselves;  it  fits  us  like  the 
wrinkles  on  our  faces.  If  we  moved  here  our 
old  friends  would  never  come  to  see  us.  This 
magnificence  would  scare  them  away.  No, 
son.  We  thank  you  for  offering  us  this  house, 
but  it  is  not  for  us.  We  will  stay  in  the  little 
cottage  where  our  old  friends  will  be  free  to 
come  and  light  a  pipe  and  chat  and  drowse 
away  the  evening  hours  that  yet  remain." 

How  wise  he  was!  He  knew  the  fitness  of 
tilings.  His  simple  comforts,  his  old  friends, 
these  he  valued  more  than  riches,  and  the 
valuation  that  he  put  upon  them  was  the  right 
one. 


CHAPTER  XII 

MY  HAND  TOUCHES  IRON 

WHEN  I  was  eleven  I  got  a  regular  job  that 
paid  me  fifty  cents  a  day.  So  I  quit  school 
just  where  the  Monitor  had  sunk  the  Mem- 
mac  in  the  "first  fight  of  the  ironclads." 
Thereafter  my  life  was  to  be  bound  up  with 
the  iron  industry.  My  job  was  in  a  nail  fac- 
tory. I  picked  the  iron  splinters  from  among 
the  good  nails  that  had  heads  on  them.  This 
taught  me  that  many  are  marred  in  the  mak- 
ing. Those  that  are  born  with  bad  heads 
must  not  be  used  in  building  a  house  or  the 
house  will  fall.  In  the  head  of  the  nail  is  its 
power  to  hold  fast.  Men  are  like  nails,  some 
have  the  hold-fast  will  in  their  heads.  Others 
have  not.  They  were  marred  in  the  making. 
They  must  be  thrown  aside  and  not  used  in 
building  the  state,  or  the  state  will  fall. 

I  put  the  good  nails  into  kegs,  and  the  head- 
less nails  and  splinters  were  sent  back  to  be 
melted  into  window  weights.  Handling  sharp 

79 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

nails  is  hard  on  the  hands.  And  the  big  half- 
dollar  that  I  earned  was  not  unmarred  with 
blood.  Every  pay-day  I  took  home  my  entire 
earnings  and  gave  them  to  mother.  All  my 
brothers  did  the  same.  Mother  paid  the 
household  expenses,  bought  our  clothing  and 
allotted  us  spending  money  and  money  for 
Sunday-school. 

This  is  a  cynical  age  and  I  can  imagine  that 
I  hear  somebody  snicker  when  I  confess  the 
fondness  I  had  for  the  Sunday-school.  I  don't 
want  any  one  to  think  I  am  laying  claim  to  the 
record  of  having  always  been  a  good  little 
boy;  nor  that  everything  I  did  was  wise.  No; 
I  confess  I  did  my  share  of  deviltry,  that  some 
of  my  deeds  were  foolish,  and  (to  use  the 
slang  of  that  time)  I  often  got  it  in  the  neck. 
Once  I  bantered  a  big  fat  boy  to  a  fight.  He 
chased  me  and  I  ran  and  crawled  into  a  place 
so  narrow  that  I  knew  he  couldn't  follow  me. 
I  crawled  under  the  floor  of  a  shed  that  was 
only  about  six  inches  above  the  ground. 
Fatty  was  at  least  ten  inches  thick  and  I 
thought  I  was  safe.  But  he  didn't  try  to  crawl 
under  the"  floor  after  me.  He  went  inside  the 
shed  and  found  that  the  boards  of  the  floor 
sank  beneath  his  weight  like  spring  boards. 
80 


MY  HAND  TOUCHES  IRON 

And  there  that  human  hippopotamus  stood 
jumping  up  and  down  while  he  mashed  me 
into  the  mud  like  a  mole  under  a  pile-driver. 
I  had  showed  that  I  had  "a  head  on  me  like 
a  nail"  when  I  crawled  under  that  floor  and 
let  Fatty  step  on  me.  There  is  a  saying,  "You 
can't  keep  a  good  man  down."  But  Fatty 
kept  me  down,  and  so  I  must  admit  he  was  a 
better  man  than  I  was.  Some  people  say  you 
should  cheer  for  the  under-dog.  But  that 
isn't  always  fair.  The  under-dog  deserves 
our  sympathy,  the  upper-dog  must  be  a  better 
dog  or  he  couldn't  have  put  the  other  dog 
down.  I  give  three  cheers  for  the  winner. 
Any  tribe  that  adopts  the  rule  of  always  hiss- 
ing the  winner  has  found  a  real  way  to  dis- 
courage enterprise. 

I  owned  a  part  interest  in  some  pigeons 
with  a  boy  named  Jack  Thomas.  The 
pigeons'  nests  were  in  Jack's  back  yard.  He 
told  me  that  my  share  of  the  eggs  had  rotted 
and  his  share  had  hatched,  so  that  my  interest 
in  the  young  pigeons  had  died  out  and  they 
were  all  his  now.  I  was  sure  it  was  a  quibble 
and  that  he  was  cheating  me.  It  made  me 
mad  and  I  sneaked  up  to  the  pigeon  loft  and 
put  a  tiny  pin  prick  in  all  the  eggs  in  the  nests. 

81 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

This  was  invisible  but  it  caused  the  eggs  to  rot 
as  he  said  mine  had,  and  I  felt  that  this  was 
only  justice.  Turn  about  is  fair  play. 

When  Jack's  eggs  didn't  hatch  he  suspected 
me,  for  I  had  been  so  foolish  as  to  predict 
that  his  eggs  wouldn't  hatch.  And  so  he  was 
sure  I  was  responsible,  although  he  didn't 
know  how.  In  fact  his  mother  had  seen  me 
enter  the  barn  and  had  told  Jack  about  it. 
One  day  when  I  went  to  the  pasture  to  get 
the  hotel  keeper's  cows,  I  ran  into  Jack  hunt- 
ing ground  squirrels  with  his  dog.  He  set  his 
dog  chasing  the  cows  and  then  ran  away  out 
of  my  reach.  The  dog  yelped  at  the  cows' 
heels  and  they  galloped  about  the  pasture  in 
a  panic.  I  shouted  to  Jack  to  call  off  his  dog 
or  there  would  be  trouble  the  next  time  I  met 
him.  But  Jack,  who  was  out  of  reach,  shouted 
encouragement  instead.  Round  and  round 
the  cattle  raced  with  that  howling  dog  scaring 
them  into  fits.  At  last  the  dog  tired  of  the 
fun  and  trotted  off  to  join  Jack,  who  was  dis- 
appearing over  the  hill.  I  then  tried  to  round 
up  the  cows  and  get  them  out  of  the  pasture. 
But  the  brutes  were  wet  with  sweat  and  as 
wild  as  deer.  I  saw  that  they  could  not  be 
milked  in  that  condition  and  felt  that  Jack's 
conduct  was  outrageous.  He  had  not  only 
82 


MY  HAND  TOUCHES  IRON 

made  trouble  for  me;  he  had  injured  the 
hotel  keeper.  There  would  be  no  milk  that 
night  fit  to  be  used. 

I  started  straight  for  Jack's  home  to  tell  his 
mother  of  his  lawless  act.  As  I  went  along, 
I  turned  the  case  over  in  my  mind,  and  the 
case  grew  stronger  and  stronger  all  the  time. 
Before  I  reached  Jack's  door  I  had  satisfied 
myself  that  his  mother  would  be  shocked  at 
the  news  and  would  at  once  cut  a  big  switch 
to  give  Jack  the  licking  he  deserved. 

But  when  I  began  to  tell  Mrs.  Thomas  of 
her  son's  crime,  she  sided  with  Jack  and 
wouldn't  listen  to  me.  "Don't  come  to  me 
with  your  troubles,  you  nasty  little  whiffet," 
she  cried.  "You  started  the  whole  thing  when 
you  sneaked  in  and  ruined  Jack's  pigeon  eggs. 
Now  that  you've  got  the  worst  of  it  you  come 
here  with  your  tattle-tales.  You  ought  to  be 
ashamed  to  show  your  face — "  She  had  be- 
come so  threatening  that  I  turned  and  ran. 
My  whole  case  had  gone  to  pieces  on  her 
sharp  tongue  like  a  toy  balloon  pricked  with 
a  pin.  I  had  been  blowing  it  up  until  it  got 
so  big  I  couldn't  see  anything  else.  It  burst 
right  in  my  face,  and  there  wasn't  even  a 
scrap  of  rubber  to  tell  where  it  had  been. 

[This  taught  me  one  of  the  best  lessons  I 
83 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

ever  learned.  By  looking  only  at  his  side  of 
a  case  a  man  can  kid  himself  into  thinking 
that  he  is  wholly  right,  that  his  cause  is 
greater  than  himself  and  represents  the  rights 
of  the  entire  community.  But  a  counter-blast 
from  the  other  side  will  deflate  his  balloon  in 
a  second  and  he'll  come  down  to  earth  with- 
out even  a  parachute  to  soften  the  jolt  when 
he  lands. 

I  learned  that  blood  is  not  only  thicker 
than  water,  but  it  is  thicker  than  curdled 
milk,  and  you  can't  line  up  a  mother  against 
her  own  child  even  if  he  chased  the  cows 
until  they  got  so  wild  they  gave  strawberry 
pop  instead  of  milk.  Any  argument  that  goes 
contrary  to  human  nature  has  struck  a  snag 
before  it  is  started.  A  man  must  come  into 
court  with  clean  hands.  I  had  started  by 
rotting  the  other  fellow's  eggs  and  he  fin- 
ished by  souring  my  milk.  I  wanted  justice 
and  I  got  it,  but  I  didn't  recognize  it  when 
it  landed  on  me  with  all  four  feet.  Chickens 
come  home  to  roost,  and  my  pigeons  had 
found  a  nesting-place  on  my  anatomy;  and 
the  spot  they  had  chosen  was  right  in  the 
neck. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

SCENE  IN  A  ROLLING  MILL 

THE  rolling  mill  where  father  worked  was 
Life's  Big  Circus  tent  to  me,  and  like  a  kid 
escaped  from  school,  eager  to  get  past  the 
tent  flap  and  mingle  with  the  clowns  and 
elephants,  I  chucked  my  job  sorting  nails 
when  I  found  an  opening  for  a  youngster  in 
the  rolling  mill.  Every  puddler  has  a  helper. 
Old  men  have  both  a  helper  and  a  boy.  I  got 
a  place  with  an  old  man,  and  so  at  the  age  of 
twelve  I  was  part  of  the  Big  Show  whose  per- 
formance is  continuous,  whose  fire-eaters 
have  real  flame  to  contend  with,  and  whose 
snake-charmers  risk  their  lives  in  handling 
great  hissing,  twisting  red-hot  serpents  of 
angry  iron. 

In  this  mill  there  is  a  constant  din  by  day 
and  night.  Patches  of  white  heat  glare  from 
the  opened  furnace  doors  like  the  teeth  of 
some  great  dark,  dingy  devil  grinning  across 
the  smoky  vapors  of  the  Pit.  Half  naked, 
85 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

soot-smeared  fellows  fight  the  furnace 
hearths  with  hooks,  rabbles  and  paddles. 
Their  scowling  faces  are  lit  with  fire,  like 
sailors  manning  their  guns  in  a  night  fight 
when  a  blazing  fire  ship  is  bearing  down 
upon  them.  The  sweat  runs  down  their  backs 
and  arms  and  glistens  in  the  changing  lights. 
Brilliant  blues  and  rays  of  green  and  bronze 
come  from  the  coruscating  metal,  molten  yet 
crystallizing  into  white-hot  frost  within  the 
furnace  puddle.  Flaming  balls  of  woolly  iron 
are  pulled  from  the  oven  doors,  flung  on  a 
two-wheeled  serving  tray,  and  rushed  sput- 
tering and  flamboyant  to  the  hungry  mouth 
of  a  machine,  which  rolls  them  upon  its 
tongue  and  squeezes  them  in  its  jaw  like  a 
cow  mulling  over  her  cud.  The  molten  slag 
runs  down  red-hot  from  the  jaws  of  this 
squeezer  and  makes  a  luminous  rivulet  on 
the  floor  like  the  water  from  the  rubber  roll- 
ers when  a  washer-woman  wrings  out  the 
saturated  clothes.  Squeezed  dry  of  its  lumi- 
nous lava,  the  white-hot  sponge  is  drawn  with 
tongs  to  the  waiting  rollers — whirling  anvils 
that  beat  it  into  the  shape  they  will.  Every- 
where are  hurrying  men,  whirring  flywheels, 
moving  levers  of  steam  engines  and  the  drum- 

86 


SCENE  IN  A  ROLLING  MILL 

like  roar  of  the  rolling  machines,  while  here 
and  there  the  fruits  of  this  toil  are  seen  as 
three  or  four  fiery  serpents  shoot  forth  from 
different  trains  of  rollers,  and  are  carried 
away,  wrought  iron  fit  for  bridging  the  creek, 
shoeing  the  mule  and  hooping  the  barrel  that 
brings  the  farmers'  apples  into  town. 

"Life  in  these  mills  is  a  terrible  life,"  the 
reformers  say.  "Men  are  ground  down  to 
scrap  and  are  thrown  out  as  wreckage."  This 
may  be  so,  but  my  life  was  spent  in  the  mills 
and  I  failed  to  discover  it.  I  went  in  a  strip- 
ling and  grew  into  manhood  with  muscled 
arms  big  as  a  bookkeeper's  legs.  The  gases, 
they  say,  will  destroy  a  man's  lungs,  but  I 
worked  all  day  in  the  mills  and  had  wind 
enough  left  to  toot  a  clarinet  in  the  band. 
I  lusted  for  labor,  I  worked  and  I  liked  it. 
And  so  did  my  forefathers  for  generations 
before  me.  It  is  no  job  for  weaklings,  but 
neither  was  tree-felling,  Indian  fighting,  road- 
making  and  the  subduing  of  a  wild  continent 
to  the  hand  of  man  as  was  done  by  the  whole 
tribe  of  Americans  for  the  sheer  joy  of  con- 
quering the  wild. 

There  is  something  in  man  that  drives  him 
forward  to  do  the  world's  work  and  build 

87 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

bigger  for  the  coming  generations,  just  as 
there  is  something  in  nature  that  causes  new 
growth  to  come  out  of  old  dirt  and  new 
worlds  to  be  continually  spawned  from  the 
ashes  of  old  played-out  suns  and  stars.  When 
nature  ceases  to  mold  new  worlds  from  the 
past  decay,  the  universe  will  wither;  and 
when  man  loses  the  urge  to  build  and  goes 
to  tearing  down,  the  end  of  his  story  is  at 
hand. 

A  tired  Thomas  whose  wife  supported  him 
by  running  a  rooming  house  once  asked  me: 

"How  many  do  you  'spose  there  are  in  the 
United  States  that  don't  have  to  work?" 

"None,"  I  replied,  "except  invalids  and 
cripples.  Every  healthy  man  in  this  country 
has  to  work  just  the  same  as  he  has  to 
breathe.  If  you  don't  want  to  work  it  is  be- 
cause you're  sick.  I'm  a  well  man,  and  I've 
got  to  be  working  all  the  time  or  I'd  go  crazy. 
I  have  no  more  desire  to  be  idle  like  you  than 
I  have  a  desire  to  wear  women's  clothes.  It 
is  contrary  to  normal  nature,  and  that's  why 
I  say  that  any  man  that  gets  that  way  is  a 
sick  man." 

The  fellow  was  a  "free  thinker,"  as  he 
called  himself.  He  was  too  lazy  to  shave  and 

88 


SCENE  IN  A  ROLLING  MILL 

his  beard  was  always  about  two  weeks  ahead 
of  him.  He  was  working  out  a  plan  for  com- 
munism in  the  United  States.  He  believed 
that  enough  work  had  now  been  done  to 
supply  the  race  forever.  It  was  just  a  ques- 
tion of  so  evenly  dividing  the  goods  that  all 
men  instead  of  a  few  could  loaf  the  rest  of 
their  years. 

He  had  such  a  tired  feeling  that  he  didn't 
have  the  ambition  of  an  oyster.  He  didn't 
have  enough  energy  to  realize  he  was  all  in. 
He  took  it  for  granted  that  the  whole  race 
was  as  tired  as  he  was. 

He  thought  he  needed  one  of  the  Utopias 
they  talk  so  much  about.  What  he  needed 
was  a  dose  of  castor-oil.  I  never  knew  a  com- 
munist in  my  life  that  was  a  well  man. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

BOILING  DOWN  THE  PIGS 

AN  IRON  puddler  is  a  "pig  boiler."  The  pig 
boiling  must  be  done  at  a  certain  temperature 
(the  pig  is  iron)  just  as  a  farmer  butchering 
hogs  must  scald  the  carcasses  at  a  certain 
temperature.  If  the  farmer's  water  is  too  hot 
it  will  set  the  hair,  that  is,  fix  the  bristles  so 
they  will  never  come  out;  if  the  water  is  not 
hot  enough  it  will  fail  to  loosen  the  bristles. 
So  the  farmer  has  to  be  an  expert,  and  when 
the  water  in  his  barrel  is  just  hot  enough, 
he  souses  the  porker  in  it,  holding  it  in  the 
hot  bath  the  right  length  of  time,  then  pulling 
it  out  and  scraping  off  the  hair.  Farmers 
learned  this  art  by  experience  long  before 
the  days  of  book  farming. 

And  so  the  metal  "pig  boiler"  ages  ago 
learned  by  experience  how  to  make  the 
proper  "heat"  to  boil  the  impurities  out  of 
pig-iron,  or  forge  iron,  and  change  it  into 

90 


BOILING  DOWN  THE  PIGS 

that  finer  product,  wrought  iron.  Pig-iron 
contains  silicon,  sulphur  and  phosphorus,  and 
these  impurities  make  it  brittle  so  that  a  cast 
iron  teakettle  will  break  at  a  blow,  like  a 
china  cup.  Armor  of  this  kind  would  have 
been  no  good  for  our  iron-clad  ancestors. 
When  a  knight  in  iron  clothes  tried  to  whip 
a  leather-clad  peasant,  the  peasant  could 
have  cracked  him  with  a  stone  and  his  clothes 
would  have  fallen  off  like  plaster  from  the 
ceiling.  So  those  early  iron  workers  learned 
to  puddle  forge  iron  and  make  it  into  wrought 
iron  which  is  tough  and  leathery  and  can 
not  be  broken  by  a  blow.  This  process  was 
handed  down  from  father  to  son,  and  in  the 
course  of  time  came  to  my  father  and  so  to 
me.  None  of  us  ever  went  to  school  and 
learned  the  chemistry  of  it  from  books.  We 
learned  the  trick  by  doing  it,  standing  with 
our  faces  in  the  scorching  heat  while  our 
hands  puddled  the  metal  in  its  glaring  bath. 
And  that  is  the  way  the  farmer's  son  has 
learned  hog  scalding  from  the  time  when  our 
ancient  fathers  got  tired  of  eating  bristles  and 
decided  to  take  their  pork  clean  shaven. 
To-day  there  are  books  telling  just  how  many 
degrees  of  heat  make  the  water  right  for 
91 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

scalding  hogs,  and  the  metallurgists  have 
written  down  the  chemical  formula  for  pud- 
dling iron.  But  the  man  who  learns  it  from 
a  book  can  not  do  it  The  mental  knowledge 
is  not  enough;  it  requires  great  muscular 
skill  like  that  of  the  heavyweight  wrestler, 
besides  great  physical  endurance  to  withstand 
the  terrific  heat.  The  worker's  body  is  in 
perfect  physical  shape  and  the  work  does  not 
injure  him  but  only  exhilarates  him.  No  iron 
worker  can  be  a  communist,  for  communists 
all  have  inferior  bodies.  The  iron  worker 
knows  that  his  body  is  superior,  and  no  sour 
philosophy  could  stay  in  him,  because  he 
would  sweat  it  out  of  his  pores  as  he  sweats 
out  all  other  poisons. 

The  old  man  that  I  worked  with  when  I 
first  entered  the  rolling  mill  was  gray  with 
his  sixty  years  of  toil.  Yet  his  eye  was  clear 
and  his  back  was  straight  and  when  he  went 
to  the  table  he  ate  like  a  sixteen-year-old 
and  his  sleep  was  dreamless.  A  man  so  old 
must  conserve  his  strength,  and  he  made  use 
of  his  husky  helper  whenever  he  could  to 
save  his  own  muscles  and  lengthen  his  endur- 
ance. My  business  was  to  do  the  little  chores 
and  save  time  for  the  helper.  I  teased  up  the 

92 


BOILING  DOWN  THE  PIGS 

furnace,  I  leveled  the  fire,  I  dished  the  cinders 
in  to  thicken  the  heat,  and  I  watched  the 
cobbles.  During  the  melting  of  the  pig-iron 
the  furnace  had  to  be  kept  as  hot  as  coal 
could  make  it. 

Before  the  use  of  coal  was  discovered,  the 
ancient  iron  makers  used  charcoal.  So  iron 
could  only  be  made  where  there  were  forests 
to  give  fuel.  Even  as  late  as  1840  the  iron 
smelters  in  Pennsylvania  were  using  wood  in 
their  furnaces.  Our  forefathers  did  not  know 
that  coal  would  burn.  And  yet  here  lay  the 
coal,  the  ore  and  the  limestone  side  by  side, 
which  meant  that  Pittsburgh  was  to  be  the 
iron  capital  of  the  world.  But  Americans  will 
not  long  sleep  in  the  presence  of  such  an 
opportunity.  Other  races  will.  The  Chinese 
have  slumbered  for  five  thousand  years 
above  a  treasure  trove  of  oil,  coal  and  iron. 
They  never  discovered  its  uses.  Instead  of 
oil  they  lit  themselves  to  bed  with  mutton 
tallow.  Instead  of  burning  coal  they  put  on 
two  pairs  of  pants  when  winter  came.  In 
place  of  steel  plows  drawn  by  oil-burning 
tractors  they  scratched  the  ground  with  a 
wooden  stick,  and  when  the  crop  failed  they 
starved  to  death  by  millions.  With  our  steel 

93 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

ships  we  send  bread  to  China  to  save  them. 
If  they  had  the  wit  to  use  their  resources 
they  could  save  themselves.  In  man's  fight 
against  the  hostile  forces  of  nature,  his  safety 
lies  in  applying  his  wit  to  the  resources  that 
nature  gave  him.  The  Americans  can  do  that. 
There  are  others  that  can  not 

I  was  riding  on  a  train  in  Indiana  when  a 
gypsy-looking  youth  came  in  and  sat  beside 
me.  His  hair  was  black,  his  skin  was  yellow 
and  he  was  dressed  in  flashy  American 
clothes.  He  had  a  cock-sure  air  about  him 
that  attracted  my  attention.  I  have  seldom 
seen  a  young  man  more  pleased  with  himself. 
He  was  entirely  too  cocky  for  me.  He  began 
talking.  He  said  he  was  a  Syrian  and  was 
worth  a  thousand  dollars.  Soon  he  would  be 
worth  a  million,  he  said.  He  was  already  put- 
ting on  his  million-dollar  airs. 

"While  selling  bananas  and  ginger  pop," 
he  told  me,  "I  made  some  money  and  learned 
the  American  ways.  I  have  a  brother  in 
South  Bend  who  has  made  some  money  shin- 
ing shoes.  I  am  going  to  get  my  brother  and 
we  will  go  back  to  the  old  home  in  Asia 
Minor.  The  hills  where  we  were  born  are  full 

94 


BOILING  DOWN  THE  PIGS 

of  coal.  The  people  call  it  black  stone.  They 
do  not  know  that  it  will  burn.  We  will  go 
back  there  with  our  American  knowledge  and 
set  the  world  on  fire." 

There  is  a  people  who  have  been  kicking 
coal  around  for  five  thousand  years  and  have 
not  yet  learned  that  it  will  burn.  Those  hills 
produced  gypsies  who  travel  around  cheat- 
ing, dickering  and  selling  gewgaws  that  are 
worth  nothing.  They  come  among  a  people 
who  have  used  their  heads.  From  these 
people  they  learned  to  heat  a  banana  stand 
with  a  little  coal  stove.  Having  mastered 
that  coal-stove  principle,  they  are  going  back 
to  their  native  hills  with  black  magic  up  their 
sleeves. 

"What  a  superior  man  am  I,"  thought  that 
young  tribesman  swollen  with  vanity,  al- 
though he  had  done  nothing. 

This  taught  me  that  some  of  these  thick- 
headed tribes  can  be  all  swelled  up  with  pride 
when  they  have  little  to  be  proud  of. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  IRON  BISCUITS 

IN  THE  Sharon  town  band  I  played  the 
clarinet  from  the  time  I  was  thirteen  until  I 
left  that  town  several  years  later  to  chase  the 
fireflies  of  vanishing  jobs  that  marked  the 
last  administration  of  Cleveland.  A  bands- 
man at  thirteen,  I  became  a  master  puddler 
at  sixteen.  At  that  time  there  were  but  five 
boys  of  that  age  who  had  become  full-fledged 
puddlers.  Of  these  young  iron  workers,  I 
suppose  there  were  few  that  "doubled  in 
brass."  But  why  should  not  an  iron  worker 
be  a  musician?  The  anvil,  symbol  of  his 
trade,  is  a  musical  instrument  and  is  heard  in 
the  anvil  chorus  from  Trovatore.  In  our  roll- 
ing mill  we  did  not  have  an  anvil  on  which 
the  "bloom"  was  beaten  by  a  trip-hammer  as 
is  done  in  the  Old  Country.  The  "squeezer" 
which  combines  the  functions  of  hammer  and 
anvil  did  the  work  instead. 

96 


THE  IRON  BISCUITS 

When  I  became  my  father's  helper  he 
began  teaching  me  to  handle  the  machinery 
of  the  trade.  The  puddling  furnace  has  a 
working  door  on  a  level  with  a  man's  stom- 
ach. Working  door  is  a  trade  name.  Out  in 
the  world  all  doors  are  working;  if  they  don't 
work  they  aren't  doors  (except  cellar  doors, 
which  are  nailed  down  under  the  Volstead 
Act).  But  the  working  door  of  a  puddling 
furnace  is  the  door  through  which  the  pud- 
dler  does  his  work.  It  is  a  porthole  opening 
upon  a  sea  of  flame.  The  heat  of  these  flames 
would  wither  a  man's  body,  and  so  they  are 
enclosed  in  a  shell  of  steel.  Through  this 
working  door  I  put  in  the  charge  of  "pigs" 
that  were  to  be  boiled.  These  short  pieces  of 
"mill  iron"  had  been  smelted  from  iron  ore; 
they  had  taken  the  first  step  on  their  journey 
from  wild  iron  to  civilized  iron.  There  isn't 
much  use  for  pig-iron  in  this  world.  You've 
got  to  be  better  iron  than  that.  Pig-iron  has 
no  fiber;  it  breaks  instead  of  bending.  Build 
a  bridge  of  it  and  a  gale  will  break  it  and  it 
will  fall  into  the  river.  Some  races  are  pig- 
iron;  Hottentots  and  Bushmen  are  pig-iron. 
They  break  at  a  blow.  They  have  been 
smelted  out  of  wild  animalism,  but  they  went 

97 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

no  further;  they  are  of  no  use  in  this  modern 
world  because  they  are  brittle.  Only  the 
wrought-iron  races  can  do  the  work.  All  this 
I  felt  but  could  not  say  in  the  days  when  I 
piled  the  pig-iron  in  the  puddling  furnace 
and  turned  with  boyish  eagerness  to  have  my 
father  show  me  how. 

Six  hundred  pounds  was  the  weight  of  pig- 
iron  we  used  to  put  into  a  single  hearth. 
Much  wider  than  the  hearth  was  the  fire 
grate,  for  we  needed  a  heat  that  was  intense. 
The  flame  was  made  by  burning  bituminous 
coal.  Vigorously  I  stoked  that  fire  for  thirty 
minutes  with  dampers  open  and  the  draft 
roaring  while  that  pig-iron  melted  down  like 
ice-cream  under  an  electric  fan.  You  have 
seen  a  housewife  sweating  over  her  oven  to 
get  it  hot  enough  to  bake  a  batch  of  biscuits. 
Her  face  gets  pink  and  a  drop  of  sweat 
dampens  her  curls.  Quite  a  horrid  job  she 
finds  it.  But  I  had  iron  biscuits  to  bake;  my 
forge  fire  must  be  hot  as  a  volcano.  There 
were  five  bakings  every  day  and  this  meant 
the  shoveling  in  of  nearly  two  tons  of  coal. 
In  summer  I  was  stripped  to  the  waist  and 
panting  while  the  sweat  poured  down  across 
my  heaving  muscles.  My  palms  and  fingers, 

98 


THE  IRON  BISCUITS 

scorched  by  the  heat,  became  hardened  like 
goat  hoofs,  while  my  skin  took  on  a  coat  of 
tan  that  it  will  wear  forever. 

What  time  I  was  not  stoking  the  fire,  I  was 
stirring  the  charge  with  a  long  iron  rabble 
that  weighed  some  twenty-five  pounds.  Strap 
an  Oregon  boot  of  that  weight  to  your  arm 
and  then  do  calisthenics  ten  hours  in  a  room 
so  hot  it  melts  your  eyebrows  and  you  will 
know  what  it  is  like  to  be  a  puddler.  But  we 
puddlers  did  not  complain.  There  is  men's 
work  to  be  done  in  this  world,  and  we  were 
the  men  to  do  it.  We  had  come  into  a  coun- 
try built  of  wood;  we  should  change  it  to  a 
country  built  of  steel  and  stone.  There  was 
grandeur  for  us  to  achieve,  like  the  Roman 
who  said,  "I  found  Rome  a  city  of  brick  and 
left  it  a  city  of  marble." 

The  spirit  of  building  was  in  our  blood; 
we  took  pride  in  the  mill,  and  the  mill  owners 
were  our  captains.  They  honored  us  for  our 
strength  and  skill,  they  paid  us  and  we  were 
loyal  to  them.  We  showed  what  bee  men 
call  "the  spirit  of  the  hive."  On  holidays  our 
ball  team  played  against  the  team  of  a  neigh- 
boring mill,  and  the  owners  and  bosses  were 
on  the  sidelines  coaching  the  men  and  yelling 

99 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

like  boys  when  a  batter  lifted  a  homer 
over  the  fence.  That  was  before  the  rattle 
heads  and  fanatics  had  poisoned  the  well  of 
good  fellowship  and  made  men  fear  and  hate 
one  another.  Sometimes  the  Welsh  would 
play  against  the  Irish  or  the  English.  At  one 
time  most  all  the  puddlers  in  America  were 
English,  Irish  or  Welsh. 

In  these  ball  games,  I  am  glad  to  say,  I  was 
always  good  enough  to  make  the  team.  After 
telling  of  being  a  bandsman  at  thirteen  and  a 
puddler  at  sixteen,  I  would  like  to  say  that 
at  seventeen  I  was  batting  more  home  runs 
than  Babe  Ruth  in  his  prime,  but  everything 
I  say  must  be  backed  up  by  the  records,  and 
when  my  baseball  record  is  examined  it  will 
be  found  that  my  best  playing  on  the  diamond 
was  done  in  the  band. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

WRESTING  A  PRIZE  FROM  NATURE'S  HAND 

AFTER  melting  down  the  pig-iron  as  quickly 
as  possible,  which  took  me  thirty  minutes, 
there  was  a  pause  in  which  I  had  time  to  wipe 
the  back  of  my  hand  on  the  dryest  part  of 
my  clothing  (if  any  spot  was  still  dry)  and 
with  my  sweat  cap  wipe  the  sweat  and  soot 
out  of  my  eyes.  For  the  next  seven  minutes 
I  "thickened  the  heat  up"  by  adding  iron 
oxide  to  the  bath.  This  was  in  the  form  of 
roll  scale.  The  furnace  continued  in  full  blast 
till  that  was  melted.  The  liquid  metal  in  the 
hearth  is  called  slag.  The  iron  oxide  is  put 
in  it  to  make  it  more  basic  for  the  chemical 
reaction  that  is  to  take  place.  Adding  the  roll 
scale  had  cooled  the  charge,  and  it  was  thick 
like  hoecake  batter.  I  now  thoroughly  mixed 
it  with  a  rabble  which  is  like  a  long  iron  hoe. 

"Snake  bake  a  hoecake, 
And  lef  a  frog  to  mind  it; 

Frog  went  away,  an' 
De  lizard  come  and  find  it." 
101 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

Any  lizard  attracted  by  my  hoecake  would 
have  to  be  a  salamander — that  fire-proof 
creature  that  is  supposed  to  live  in  flames. 
For  the  cooling  down  of  that  molten  batter 
didn't  go  so  far  but  that  it  still  would  make 
too  hot  a  mouthful  for  any  creature  alive. 

The  puddler's  hand-rag  is  one  of  his  most 
important  tools.  It  is  about  the  size  of  a 
thick  wash-rag,  and  the  puddler  carries  it  in 
the  hand  that  clasps  the  rabble  rod  where  it 
is  too  hot  for  bare  flesh  to  endure. 

The  melted  iron  contains  carbon,  sulphur 
and  phosphorus,  and  to  get  rid  of  them,  espe- 
cially the  sulphur  and  phosphorus,  is  the  ob- 
ject of  all  this  heat  and  toil.  For  it  is  the  sul- 
phur and  phosphorus  that  make  the  iron 
brittle.  And  brittle  iron  might  as  well  not  be 
iron  at  all;  it  might  better  be  clay.  For  a  good 
brick  wall  is  stronger  than  a  wall  of  brittle 
iron.  Yet  nature  will  not  give  us  pure  iron. 
She  always  gives  it  to  us  mixed  with  the  stuff 
that  weakens  it — this  dross  and  brimstone. 
Nature  hands  out  no  bonanzas,  no  lead-pipe 
cinches  to  mankind.  Many  must  claw  for 
everything  he  gets,  and  when  he  gets  it,  it  is 
mixed  with  dirt.  And  if  he  wants  it  clean, 
he'll  have  to  clean  it  with  the  labor  of  his 
102 


WRESTING  A  PRIZE 

hands.  "Why  can't  we  have  a  different  sys- 
tem than  this?"  I  heard  a  theorist  complain. 
"I'll  bite,"  I  said.  "Why  can't  we?"  And  I 
went  on  boiling  out  the  impurities  in  my 
puddle. 

Man's  nature  is  like  iron,  never  born  in  a 
pure  state  but  always  mixed  with  elements 
that  weaken  it.  Envy,  greed  and  malice  are 
mixed  with  every  man's  nature  when  he 
comes  into  the  world.  They  are  the  brim- 
stone that  makes  him  brittle.  He  is  pig-iron 
until  he  boils  them  out  of  his  system.  Sav- 
ages and  criminals  are  men  who  have  not 
tried  to  boil  this  dross  out  of  their  nature. 
Lincoln  was  one  who  boiled  it  out  in  the  fires 
of  adversity.  He  puddled  his  own  soul  till 
the  metal  was  pure,  and  that's  how  he  got  the 
Iron  Will  that  was  strong  enough  to  save  a 
nation. 

My  purpose  in  slackening  my  heat  as  soon 
as  the  pig-iron  was  melted  was  to  oxidize  the 
phosphorus  and  sulphur  ahead  of  the  carbon. 
Just  as  alcohol  vaporizes  at  a  lower  heat  than 
water,  so  sulphur  and  phosphorus  oxidize  at 
a  lower  heat  than  carbon.  When  this  reac- 
tion begins  I  see  light  flames  breaking  through 
the  lake  of  molten  slag  in  my  furnace.  Prob- 
103 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

ably  from  such  a  sight  as  this  the  old-time 
artists  got  their  pictures  of  Hell.  The  flames 
are  caused  by  the  burning  of  carbon  monox- 
ide from  the  oxidation  of  carbon.  The  slag 
is  basic  and  takes  the  sulphur  and  phosphorus 
into  combination,  thus  ending  its  combina- 
tion with  the  iron.  The  purpose  now  is  to 
oxidize  the  carbon,  too,  without  reducing  the 
phosphorus  and  sulphur  and  causing  them  to 
return  to  the  iron.  We  want  the  pure  iron  to 
begin  crystallizing  out  of  the  bath  like  butter 
from  the  churning  buttermilk. 

More  and  more  of  the  carbon  gas  comes  out 
of  the  puddle,  and  as  it  bubbles  out  the  charge 
is  agitated  by  its  escape  and  the  "boil"  is  in 
progress.  It  is  not  real  boiling  like  the  boiling 
of  a  teakettle.  When  a  teakettle  boils  the 
water  turns  to  bubbles  of  vapor  and  goes  up 
in  the  air  to  turn  to  water  again  when  it  gets 
cold.  But  in  the  boiling  iron  puddle  a  chemi- 
cal change  is  taking  place.  The  iron  is  not 
going  up  in  vapor.  The  carbon  and  the  oxy- 
gen are.  This  formation  of  gas  in  the  molten 
puddle  causes  the  whole  charge  to  boil  up 
like  an  ice-cream  soda.  The  slag  overflows. 
Redder  than  strawberry  syrup  and  as  hot  as 
the  fiery  lake  in  Hades  it  flows  over  the  rim 
104 


WRESTING  A  PRIZE 

of  the  hearth  and  out  through  the  slag-hole. 
My  helper  has  pushed  up  a  buggy  there  to 
receive  it.  More  than  an  eighth  and  some- 
times a  quarter  of  the  weight  of  the  pig-iron 
flows  off  in  slag  and  is  carted  away. 

Meanwhile  I  have  got  the  job  of  my  life  on 
my  hands.  I  must  stir  my  boiling  mess  with 
all  the  strength  in  my  body.  For  now  is  my 
chance  to  defeat  nature  and  wring  from  the 
loosening  grip  of  her  hand  the  pure  iron  she 
never  intended  to  give  us. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

MAN  IS  IRON  TOO 

FOR  twenty-five  minutes  while  the  boil  goes 
on  I  stir  it  constantly  with  my  long  iron 
rabble.  A  cook  stirring  gravy  to  keep  it  from 
scorching  in  the  skillet  is  done  in  two  minutes 
and  backs  off  blinking,  sweating  and  chok- 
ing, having  finished  the  hardest  job  of  getting 
dinner.  But  my  hardest  job  lasts  not  two 
minutes  but  the  better  part  of  half  an  hour. 
My  spoon  weighs  twenty-five  pounds,  my  por- 
ridge is  pasty  iron,  and  the  heat  of  my  kitchen 
is  so  great  that  if  my  body  was  not  hardened 
to  it,  the  ordeal  would  drop  me  in  my  tracks. 

Little  spikes  of  pure  iron  like  frost  spars 
glow  white-hot  and  stick  oat  of  the  churning 
slag.  These  must  be  stirred  under  at  once; 
the  long  stream  of  flame  from  the  grate  plays 
over  the  puddle,  and  the  pure  iron  if  lapped 
by  these  gases  would  be  oxidized — burned  up. 

Pasty  masses  of  iron  form  at  the  bottom  of 
the  puddle.  There  they  would  stick  and 
106 


MAN  IS  IRON  TOO 

become  chilled  if  they  were  not  constantly 
stirred.  The  whole  charge  must  be  mixed 
and  mixed  as  it  steadily  thickens  so  that  it 
will  be  uniform  throughout.  I  am  like  some 
frantic  baker  in  the  inferno  kneading  a  batch 
of  iron  bread  for  the  devil's  breakfast. 

"It's  an  outrage  that  men  should  have  to 
work  like  this,"  a  reformer  told  me. 

"They  don't  have  to,"  I  replied.  "Nobody 
forced  me  to  do  this.  I  do  it  because  I  would 
rather  live  in  an  Iron  Age  than  live  in  a  world 
of  ox-carts.  Man  can  take  his  choice." 

The  French  were  not  compelled  to  stand  in 
the  flame  that  scorched  Verdun.  They  could 
have  backed  away  and  let  the  Germans 
through.  The  Germans  would  not  have  killed 
them.  They  would  only  have  saddled  them 
and  got  on  their  backs  and  ridden  them  till 
the  end  of  time. 

And  so  men  are  not  compelled  to  face  the 
scorching  furnaces;  we  do  not  have  to  forge 
the  iron  that  resists  the  invading  cyclone  and 
the  leveling  earthquake.  We  could  quit  cold 
and  let  wild  nature  kick  us  about  at  will.  We 
could  have  cities  of  wood  to  be  wiped  out  by 
conflagrations;  we  could  build  houses  of  mud 
and  sticks  for  the  gales  to  unroof  like  a  Hot- 
107 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

tentot  village.  We  could  bridge  our  small 
rivers  with  logs  and  be  flood-bound  when  the 
rains  descended.  We  could  live  by  wheelbar- 
row transit  like  the  Chinaman  and  leave  to 
some  braver  race  the  task  of  belting  the  world 
with  railroads  and  bridging  the  seas  with 
iron  boats. 

Nobody  compels  us  to  stand  shoulder  to 
shoulder  and  fight  off  nature's  calamities  as 
the  French  fought  off  their  oppressor  at  Ver- 
dun. I  repeat,  we  could  let  nature  oppress  us 
as  she  oppresses  the  meek  Chinese — let  her 
whip  us  with  cold,  drought,  flood,  isolation 
and  famine. 

We  chose  to  resist  as  the  French  resisted— 
because  we  are  men.  Nature  can  chase  the 
measly  savage  fleeing  naked  through  the 
bush.  But  nature  can't  run  us  ragged  when 
all  we  have  to  do  is  put  up  a  hard  fight  and 
conquer  her.  The  iron  workers  are  civiliza- 
tion's shock  troops  grappling  with  tyrannous 
nature  on  her  own  ground  and  conquering 
new  territory  in  which  man  can  live  in  safety 
and  peace.  Steel  houses  with  glass  windows 
are  born  of  his  efforts.  There  is  a  glory  in 
this  fight;  man  feels  a  sense  of  grandeur.  We 
are  robbing  no  one.  From  the  harsh  bosom 
108 


MAN  IS  IRON  TOO 

of  the  hills  we  wring  the  iron  milk  that  makes 
us  strong.  Nature  is  no  kind  mother;  she 
resists  with  flood  and  earthquake,  drought 
and  cyclone.  Nature  is  fierce  and  formid- 
able, but  fierce  is  man's  soui  to  subdue  her. 
The  stubborn  earth  is  iron,  but  man  is  iron 
too. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

ON  BEING  A  GOOD  GUESSKR 

THE  charge  which  I  have  been  kneading  in 
my  furnace  has  now  "come  to  nature,"  the 
stringy  sponge  of  pure  iron  is  separating  from 
the  slag.  The  "balling"  of  this  sponge  into 
three  loaves  is  a  task  that  occupies  from  ten 
to  fifteen  minutes.  The  particles  of  iron 
glowing  in  this  spongy  mass  are  partly 
welded  together;  they  are  sticky  and  stringy 
and  as  the  cooling  continues  they  are  rolled 
up  into  wads  like  popcorn  balls.  The  charge, 
which  lost  part  of  its  original  weight  by  the 
draining  off  of  slag,  now  weighs  five  hundred 
fifty  to  six  hundred  pounds.  I  am  balling  it 
into  three  parts  of  equal  weight.  If  the  charge 
is  six  hundred  pounds,  each  of  my  balls  must 
weigh  exactly  two  hundred  pounds. 

I  have  always  been  proud  of  the  "batting 

eye"  that  enables  an  iron  puddler  to  shape 

the  balls  to  the  exact  weight  required.    This  is 

a  mental  act, — an  act  of  judgment.    The  artist 

110 


ON  BEING  A  GOOD  GUESSER 

and  the  sculptor  must  have  this  same  sense 
of  proportion.  A  man  of  low  intelligence 
could  never  learn  to  do  it.  We  are  paid  by 
weight,  and  in  my  time,  in  the  Sharon  mill, 
the  balls  were  required  to  be  two  hundred 
pounds.  Every  pound  above  that  went  to  the 
company  and  was  loss  to  the  men. 

I  have  heard  that  "guessing  pigs"  was  an 
old-time  sport  among  farmers.  To  test  their 
skill,  each  farmer  would  guess  the  weight  of 
a  grazing  pig.  Then  they  would  catch  the 
porker,  throw  him  on  the  scales,  and  find 
out  which  farmer  had  guessed  nearest  the 
mark.  Sunday  clothes  used  to  be  badly  soiled 
in  this  sport. 

But  the  iron  worker  does  not  guess  his  pigs. 
He  knows  exactly  how  much  pig-iron  he  put 
into  the  boil.  His  guessing  skill  comes  into 
play  when  with  a  long  paddle  and  hook  he 
separates  six  hundred  pounds  of  sizzling  fire- 
works into  three  fire  balls  each  of  which  will 
weigh  two  hundred  pounds. 

The  balls  are  rolled  up  into  three  resting 
places,  one  in  the  fire-bridge  corner,  one  in 
the  flue-bridge  corner,  and  one  in  the  jam,  all 
ready  for  the  puddler  to  draw  them. 

My  batch  of  biscuits  is  now  done  and  I  must 
111 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

take  them  out  at  once  and  rush  them  to  the 
hungry  mouth  of  the  squeezing  machine.  A 
bride  making  biscuits  can  jerk  them  out  of 
the  oven  all  in  one  pan.  But  my  oven  is 
larger  and  hotter.  I  have  to  use  long-handled 
tongs,  and  each  of  my  biscuits  weighs  twice 
as  much  as  I  weigh.  Suppose  you  were  a 
cook  with  a  fork  six  feet  long,  and  had  three 
roasting  sheep  on  the  grid  at  once  to  be  forked 
off  as  quickly  as  possible.  Could  you  do  it? 
Even  with  a  helper  wouldn't  you  probably 
scorch  the  mutton  or  else  burn  yourself  to 
death  with  the  hot  grease?  That  is  where 
strength  and  skill  must  both  come  into  play. 

One  at  a  time  the  balls  are  drawn  out  on  to 
a  buggy  and  wheeled  swiftly  to  the  squeezer. 
This  machine  squeezes  out  the  slag  which 
flows  down  like  the  glowing  lava  running  out 
of  a  volcano.  The  motion  of  the  squeezer  is 
like  the  circular  motion  you  use  in  rolling  a 
bread  pill  between  the  palms  and  squeezing 
the  water  out  of  it.  I  must  get  the  three  balls, 
or  blooms,  out  of  the  furnace  and  into  the 
squeezer  while  the  slag  is  still  liquid  so  that 
it  can  be  squeezed  out  of  the  iron. 

From  cold  pig-iron  to  finished  blooms  is  a 
process  that  takes  from  an  hour  and  ten 
112 


ON  BEING  A  GOOD  GUESSER 

minutes,  to  an  hour  and  forty  minutes,  de- 
pending on  the  speed  and  skill  of  the  puddler, 
and  the  kind  of  iron.  I  was  a  fast  one,  my- 
self. But  you  expected  that,  from  the  fact 
that  I  am  telling  the  story.  The  man  that  tells 
the  story  always  comes  out  a  winner. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

I  START  ON  MY  TRAVELS 

Now  that  I  was  a  master  puddler,  I  faced 
the  problem  of  finding  a  furnace  of  my  own. 
I  saw  no  chance  in  Sharon.  Furnaces  passed 
from  father  to  son,  so  I  could  not  hope  to  get 
one  of  the  furnaces  controlled  by  another 
family.  My  father  was  not  ready  to  relin- 
quish his  furnace  to  me,  as  he  was  good  for 
twenty  years  more  of  this  vigorous  labor. 

I  wanted  to  be  a  real  boss  puddler,  and  so, 
when  I  was  eighteen  I  went  to  Pittsburgh 
and  got  a  furnace.  But  a  new  period  of  hard 
times  was  setting  in,  jobs  were  getting  scarce 
as  they  had  been  in  1884.  That  was  the  year 
when  we  had  no  money  in  the  house  and  I 
was  chasing  every  loose  nickel  in  town.  The 
mill  at  Sharon  was  down,  and  father  was 
hunting  work  in  Pittsburgh  and  elsewhere. 
Then  after  a  period  of  prosperity  the  hard 
times  had  come  again  in  1891  and  '92.  My 
furnace  job  in  Pittsburgh  was  not  steady. 
The  town  was  full  of  iron  workers  and  many 
114 


I  START  ON  MY  TRAVELS 

of  them  were  in  desperate  need.  Those  who 
had  jobs  divided  their  time  with  their  needy 
comrades.  A  man  with  hungry  children 
would  be  given  a  furnace  for  a  few  days  to 
earn  enough  to  ward  off  starvation.  I  had 
no  children  and  felt  that  I  should  not  hold  a 
furnace.  I  left  Pittsburgh  and  went  to  Niles, 
Ohio,  where  I  found  less  competition  for  the 
jobs.  I  worked  a  few  weeks  and  the  mill 
shut  down.  I  wandered  all  over  the  iron  dis- 
trict and  finally,  deciding  that  the  North  held 
no  openings,  I  began  working  my  way  toward 
the  iron  country  in  the  South. 

The  Sharon  mill  did  not  shut  down  com- 
pletely. The  owner  operated  it  at  a  loss 
rather  than  throw  all  his  old  hands  out  on  the 
world.  Twenty  years  later  I  met  him  on  a 
train  in  the  West  and  we  talked  of  old  times 
when  I  worked  in  his  mill.  As  long  as  he  lived 
he  was  loved  and  venerated  by  his  former 
employees. 

Father  was  putting  in  short  time  at  Sharon 
and  was  badly  worried.  He  was  thinking  of 
setting  out  again  to  go  from  town  to  town 
looking  for  work,  but  I  had  advised  him 
against  it.  I  had  told  him  that  he  would 
merely  find  crowds  of  idle  men  roaming  from 
115 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

mill  to  mill  along  with  him.     My  brothers 
gave  him  similar  advice. 

"Father,"  we  said,  "it  is  a  time  of  business 
depression  and  wide-spread  unemployment 
If  you  went  to  Pittsburgh  you  might  find  a 
few  weeks'  work,  but  it  would  not  pay  you 
to  go  there  for  it.  You  would  have  to  lay  out 
cash  for  your  board  and  lodging  there  before 
you  could  send  anything  home  to  mother. 
Keeping  up  two  establishments  is  harder 
than  keeping  up  one.  You  have  a  home  here 
partly  paid  for,  and  a  big  garden  that  helps 
support  that  home.  It  is  better  for  you  to 
stick  with  this  establishment  and  work  at 
half  time  in  the  mill  than  to  roam  around  at 
big  expense  seeking  full  time  in  some  other 
mill.  There  may  be  no  mill  in  the  land  that 
is  running  full  time." 

This  had  not  occurred  to  him.  What  lay 
beyond  the  hills  was  all  mystery.  But  we 
young  fellows  had  been  brought  up  in  the 
American  atmosphere,  we  had  read  the 
Youth's  Companion  and  the  newspapers,  and 
our  outlook  was  widened;  we  could  guess 
that  conditions  were  the  same  in  other  states 
as  they  were  in  our  part  of  Pennsylvania,  for 
we  were  studying  economic  causes. 
116 


I  START  ON  MY  TRAVELS 

"It  is  better  for  you  to  stay  here  and  wait  for 
good  times  to  come  again.  Hang  on  to  your 
home,  and  if  in  a  few  months  or  a  few  years 
the  mills  begin  booming  again  you  will  be 
secure  for  life.  But  if  the  iron  industry 
doesn't  revive,  give  up  that  trade  and  find 
other  work  here.  If  necessary  go  out  and 
work  on  a  farm,  for  the  farming  industry  will 
always  have  to  be  carried  on." 

Father  saw  the  force  of  our  argument.  So 
he  stayed  and  kept  his  home.  He  has  it 
to-day.  But  if  he  had  wandered  around  as 
millions  of  us  did  in  those  hard  days  he  would 
surely  have  lost  it.  This  was  my  first  little 
attempt  to  work  out  an  economic  problem. 
I  had  studied  all  the  facts  and  then  pro- 
nounced my  judgment.  It  proved  right,  and 
so  I  learned  that  in  my  small  way  I  had  a 
head  for  financiering.  This  encouraged  me, 
for  it  taught  me  that  the  worker  can  solve 
part  of  his  problems  by  using  his  head. 

The  fear  of  ending  in  the  poor-house  is  one 
of  the  terrors  that  dog  a  man  through  life. 
There  are  only  three  parts  to  the  labor  prob- 
lem, and  this  is  one  of  them.  This  fear  causes 
"unrest."  This  unrest  was  used  by  revolu- 
tionists to  promote  Bolshevism  which  turns 
117 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

whole  empires  into  poor-houses.  Such  a 
"remedy,"  of  course,  is  worse  than  the 
disease.  I  think  I  know  a  plan  by  which  all 
workers  can  make  their  old  age  secure.  I  will 
go  into  it  more  fully  in  a  later  chapter. 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE  RED  FLAG  AND  THE  WATERMELONS 

I  HAVE  said  that  the  labor  problem  has  three 
parts.  I  call  them  (1)  Wages,  (2)  Working 
Conditions  and  (3)  Living  Conditions.  By 
living  conditions  I  mean  the  home  and  its 
security.  My  father  had  reached  the  stage 
where  this  was  the  problem  that  worried  him. 
He  was  growing  old  and  must  soon  cease 
working.  But  his  home  was  not  yet  secure 
and  he  was  haunted  with  the  fear  that  his  old 
age  might  be  shelterless.  We  told  him  not  to 
worry;  the  Davis  boys  were  many  and  we 
would  repay  him  for  the  fatherly  care  he  had 
given  us.  But  he  was  a  proud  man  (as  all 
muscular  men  are),  and  he  could  find  no 
comfort  in  the  thought  of  being  supported  by 
his  sons.  I  am  glad  he  never  had  to  be.  In- 
dependence has  made  his  old  age  happy  and 
he  has  proved  that  a  worker,  if  he  keeps  his 
health,  can  provide  for  his  old  age  and  bring 
up  a  big  family  too. 

119 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

We  older  boys  left  home  and  hunted  work 
elsewhere.  I  was  young  and  not  bothered 
about  working  conditions  or  living  condi- 
tions. I  was  so  vigorous  that  I  could  work 
under  any  conditions,  and  old  age  was  so  far 
away  that  I  was  not  worried  about  a  home 
for  my  declining  years.  Wages  was  my  sole 
problem.  I  wanted  steady  wages,  and  of 
course  I  wanted  the  highest  I  could  get.  To 
find  the  place  where  wages  were  to  be  had  I 
was  always  on  the  go.  When  a  mill  closed 
I  did  not  wait  for  it  to  reopen,  but  took  the 
first  train  for  some  other  mill  town.  The 
first  train  usually  was  a  freight  If  not,  I 
waited  for  a  freight,  for  I  could  sleep  better 
in  a  freight  car  than  in  a  Pullman — it  cost 
less.  I  could  save  money  and  send  it  to 
mother,  then  she  would  not  have  to  sell  her 
feather  beds. 

All  of  this  sounds  nobler  than  it  was.  In 
those  days  workers  never  traveled  on  pas- 
senger trains  unless  they  could  get  a  pass. 
Judges  and  statesmen  pursued  the  same 
policy.  To  pay  for  a  ticket  was  money  thrown 
away;  so  thought  the  upper  classes  and  the 
lower  classes.  About  the  only  people  that 
paid  car  fare  were  the  Knights  of  Pythias  on 
120 


THE  RED  FLAG 

their  way  to  their  annual  convention.  Rail- 
road workers  could  get  all  the  passes  they 
wanted,  and  any  toiler  whose  sister  had  mar- 
ried a  brakeman  or  whose  second  cousin  was 
a  conductor  "bummed"  the  railroad  for  a  pass 
and  got  it.  None  of  my  relatives  was  a  rail- 
road man,  and  so  to  obtain  the  free  transpor- 
tation which  was  every  American's  inalien- 
able right,  I  had  to  let  the  passenger  trains 
go  by  and  take  the  freights. 

Once  I  got  ditched  at  a  junction,  and  while 
waiting  for  the  next  freight  I  wandered  down 
the  track  to  where  I  had  seen  a  small  house 
and  a  big  watermelon  patch.  The  man  who 
lived  there  was  a  chap  named  Frank  Banner- 
man.  I  always  remember  him  because  he 
was  a  communist,  the  first  one  I  ever  saw, 
and  he  filled  my  pockets  with  about  ten 
pounds  of  radical  pamphlets  which  I  prom- 
ised to  read.  He  made  a  bargain  with  me 
that  if  I  would  read  and  digest  the  Red  litera- 
ture he  would  give  me  all  the  watermelons  I 
could  eat. 

"I'm  a  comrade  already,"  I  said,  meaning 
it  as  a  merry  jest,  that  I  would  be  anything 
for  a  watermelon.     But  he  took  it  seriously 
and  his  eyes  lit  up  like  any  fanatic's. 
121 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

"I  knew  it,"  he  said.  "With  a  face  like 
yours — look  at  the  brow,  look  at  the  intellect, 
the  intellect."  I  was  flattered.  "Come  here, 
wife,"  he  called  through  the  door.  "Gome 
here  and  look  at  the  intellect." 

The  wife,  who  was  a  barefooted,  freckle- 
faced  woman,  came  out  on  the  porch  and, 
smiling  sweetly,  sized  up  my  intellect.  I  made 
up  my  mind  that  here  were  the  two  smartest 
people  in  America.  For  they  saw  I  was  bulg- 
ing with  intellect.  Nobody  else  had  ever  dis- 
covered it,  not  even  I  myself.  I  thought  I  was 
a  muscle-bound  iron  puddler,  but  they  pro- 
nounced me  an  intellectual  giant.  It  never 
occurred  to  me  that  they  might  have  guessed 
wrong,  while  the  wise  old  world  had  guessed 
right.  If  the  world  was  in  step,  they  were  out 
of  step,  but  I  figured  that  the  world  was  out 
of  step  and  they  had  the  right  stride.  I 
thought  their  judgment  must  be  better  than 
the  judgment  of  the  whole  world  because 
their  judgment  pleased  me.  I  later  learned 
that  their  judgment  was  just  like  the  judg- 
ment of  all  Reds.  That's  what  makes  'em 
Red. 

"Are  there  many  of  us  where  you  come 
from?"  the  man  asked. 
122 


THE  RED  FLAG 

"Many  what?"  I  asked. 

"Communists,  communists,"  he  said  ex- 
citedly. 

I  wanted  to  please  him,  because  we  were 
now  cracking  the  melons  and  scooping  out 
their  luscious  hearts.  So  I  told  him  how  many 
comrades  there  were  in  each  of  the  rolling 
mills  where  I  had  worked.  I  had  to  invent 
the  statistics  out  of  my  own  head,  but  that 
head  was  full  of  intellect,  so  I  jokingly  gave 
him  a  fine  array  of  figures.  The  fact  was  that 
there  may  have  been  an  addle-pated  Red 
among  the  mill  hands  of  that  time,  but  if  there 
was  I  had  never  met  him. 

The  figures  that  I  furnished  Comrade  Ban- 
nerman  surprised  him.  I  counted  the  seeds 
in  each  slice  of  watermelon  and  gave  that  as 
the  number  of  comrades  in  each  mill.  The 
number  was  too  high.  Comrade  Bannerman 
knew  how  many  Reds  there  were  in  the  coun- 
try, and  it  appeared  that  the  few  mills  I  had 
worked  in  contained  practically  the  whole 
communist  party.  He  got  rather  excited  and 
said  the  numbers  were  growing  faster  than 
he  had  imagined.  He  had  figured  that  it 
would  take  forty  years  to  bring  about  the 
Red  commonwealth,  but  with  the  new  light  I 
123 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

had  thrown  on  the  subject  he  concluded  that 
the  times  were  ripening  faster  than  he  had 
dared  to  hope,  and  that  there  was  no  doubt 
the  revolution  would  be  upon  us  within  three 
years. 

The  comrade  told  me  he  was  not  popular 
in  the  village  for  two  reasons.  The  capitalis- 
tic storekeepers  called  him  a  dead  beat  and 
the  church  people  had  rotten-egged  him  for 
a  speech  he  had  made  denouncing  religion. 
I  saw  by  his  hands  that  he  didn't  work  much, 
and  from  the  hands  of  his  wife  I  learned  who 
raised  the  watermelons  he  was  feeding  to  me. 
I  remember  wondering  why  he  didn't  pay  his 
grocery  bill  with  the  money  he  spent  on 
pamphlets  to  stuff  in  the  pockets  of  passers- 

by. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

ENVY  IS  THE  SULPHUR  IN  HUMAN  PIG-IRON 

WHILE  I  was  feasting  on  the  watermelons 
and  feeling  at  peace  with  all  the  world,  a 
long  passenger  train  pulled  into  the  junction. 
The  train  was  made  up  of  Pullmans  and  each 
car  was  covered  with  flags,  streamers  and 
lodge  insignia.  On  the  heels  of  this  train 
came  another  and  then  another.  These  gay 
cars  were  filled  with  members  of  the  Knights 
of  Pythias  going  to  their  convention  in  Den- 
ver. 

At  the  sight  of  these  men  in  their  Pullmans, 
my  friend  the  communist  first  turned  pale, 
then  green,  then  red.  His  eyes  narrowed  and 
blazed  like  those  of  a  madman.  He  stood  up 
on  his  porch,  clenched  his  fists  and  launched 
into  the  most  violent  fit  of  cursing  I  ever 
heard.  The  sight  of  those  holiday-makers 
had  turned  him  into  a  demon.  He  thought 
they  were  capitalists.  Here  was  the  hated 
tribe  of  rich  men,  the  idle  classes,  all  dressed 
125 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

up  with  flags  flying,  riding  across  the  country 
on  a  jamboree. 

"The  blood-sucking  parasites!  The  blear- 
eyed  barnacles!"  yelled  Comrade  Banner- 
man.  He  shook  his  fists  at  the  plutocrats  and 
cursed  until  he  made  me  sick.  He  was  a  tank- 
town  nut  who  didn't  like  to  work;  had  built 
up  a  theory  that  work  was  a  curse  and  that 
the  "idle  classes"  had  forced  this  curse  on 
the  masses,  of  which  he  was  one.  He  be- 
lieved that  all  the  classes  had  to  do  was  to 
clip  coupons,  cash  them  and  ride  around  the 
country  in  Pullman  palace  cars.  Here  was 
the  whole  bunch  of  them  in  seven  "specials" 
rolling  right  by  his  front  door.  He  cursed 
them  again  and  prayed  that  the  train  might 
be  wrecked  and  that  every  one  of  the  blinkety 
blinkety  scoundrels  might  be  killed.  If  all 
these  idle  plutocrats  could  be  destroyed  in  a 
heap  they  would  be  lifted  from  the  backs  of 
the  masses,  and  the  masses  would  not  have  to 
work  any  more. 

Bannerman  was  a  fool,  and  I  could  even 
then  see  just  what  made  him  foolish.  He  was 
full  of  the  brimstone  of  envy.  The  sight  of 
those  well-dressed  travelers  eating  in  the  din- 
ing cars  drove  him  wild.  He  wanted  to  be  in 
126 


ENVY  IS  THE  SULPHUR 

their  places,  but  he  was  too  lazy  to  work  and 
earn  the  money  that  would  put  him  there.  I 
knew  that  they  were  not  rich  men;  they  were 
school-teachers,  doctors,  butchers  and  bakers, 
machinists  and  puddlers.  They  had  saved 
their  money  for  a  year  in  order  to  have  the 
price  of  this  convention  trip  to  Denver.  Com- 
rade Bannerman  was  pig-iron,  and  envy 
made  him  brittle.  He  should  have  been 
melted  down  and  had  the  sulphur  boiled  out 
of  him.  Then  he  would  have  been  wrought 
iron;  as  were  the  men  he  was  so  envious  of. 

He  was  not  envious  of  me,  of  course,  be- 
cause he  thought  I  was  a  tramp.  Indeed 
he  thought  I  was  as  envious  as  he,  and  so  he 
classed  the  two  of  us  as  "intellectuals."  From 
this  I  learned  that  "Intellectuals"  is  a  name 
that  weak  men,  crazed  with  envy,  give  to 
themselves.  They  believe  the  successful  men 
lack  intellect;  are  all  luck.  This  thought 
soothes  their  envy  and  keeps  it  from  driving 
them  mad. 

I  thanked  Comrade  Bannerman  for  his 
pamphlets  and  threw  him  a  few  coins  to  pay 
for  the  melons  he  had  given  me.  But  my 
peep  into  his  soul  had  taught  me  more  than 
his  propaganda  could  teach  me.  Later  I 
127 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

read  all  the  pamphlets  because  I  had  prom- 
ised I  would.  They  told  of  the  labor  move- 
ment and  the  theories  at  work  in  Germany. 
One  of  them  was  called  Merrie  England  and 
declared  that  England  had  once  been  merry, 
but  capitalism  had  crushed  all  joy  and  turned 
the  island  into  a  living  hell.  I  remembered 
my  mother  in  Wales  rocking  her  baby's 
cradle  and  singing  all  day  long  with  a  voice 
vibrant  with  joy.  If  capitalism  had  crushed 
her  heart  she  hadn't  heard  about  it. 

When  the  lodge  excursion  train  had  passed 
on  toward  the  convention  city,  I  hopped  a 
freight  and  bade  Comrade  Bannerman  good- 
by.  Had  I  told  him  that  from  my  earnings 
I  had  salted  away  enough  money  to  buy  his 
little  shack  he  would  have  hated  me  as  he 
hated  the  lodge  members  in  the  Pullmans. 
I  did  not  hate  those  men.  They  were  doing 
me  a  service  by  traveling  across  the  country. 
For  they  belonged  to  the  fare-paying  classes; 
their  money  kept  the  railroads  going  so  they 
could  carry  politicians  and  some  of  us  work- 
ing men  free. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

LOADED  DOWN  WITH  LITERATURE 

AFTER  I  had  read  the  various  pamphlets 
that  Bannerman  gave  me  I  was  like  the  old 
negro  who  went  to  sleep  with  his  mouth  open. 
A  white  man  came  along  and  put  a  spoonful 
of  quinine  in  his  mouth.  When  the  negro 
woke  up  the  bitter  taste  worried  him.  "What 
does  it  mean?"  he  asked.  The  white  man 
told  him  it  meant  that  he  "had  done  bu'sted 
his  gall  bladder  and  didn't  have  long  to  live." 

A  mighty  bad  taste  was  left  in  my  mouth 
by  those  communist  pamphlets.  If  they  were 
telling  the  truth  I  realized  that  labor's  gall 
bladder  had  done  bu'sted  and  we  didn't  have 
long  to  live.  One  book  said  that  British  capi- 
talists owned  all  the  money  in  the  world  and 
that  at  a  given  signal  they  would  draw  the 
money  out  of  America  and  the  working  men 
here  would  starve  to  death  in  twenty-nine 
days.  It  seemed  that  some  crank  had  fasted 
that  many  days  in  order  to  get  accurate  statis- 
129 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

tics  showing  just  how  long  the  working  man 
could  hope  to  last  after  England  pushed  the 
button  for  the  money  panic. 

Another  book  said  that  Wall  Street  now 
owned  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  wealth  in 
America  and  was  getting  the  other  ten  at  the 
rate  of  eight  per  cent,  a  year.  Within  twelve 
years  Wall  Street  would  own  everything  in 
the  world,  and  mankind  would  be  left  naked 
and  starving. 

The  wildest  book  of  all  was  called  Caesar's 
Column.  It  was  in  the  form  of  a  novel  and 
told  how  the  rich  in  America  worshiped  gold 
and  lust  instead  of  God  and  brotherly  love, 
and  how  they  drove  their  carriages  over  the 
working  man's  children  and  left  them 
crushed  and  bleeding  in  the  street.  America 
had  ceased  to  be  a  republic  and  was  an 
oligarchy  of  wealth  all  owned  by  a  dozen 
great  families  while  the  millions  were  starv- 
ing. The  end  of  the  book  described  a  great 
revolution  in  which  the  people  arose,  led  by 
an  Italian  communist  named  Caesar  Spadoni. 
The  mob  took  all  the  fine  houses  and  killed 
the  rich  people.  Caesar  took  the  bodies  and, 
laying  them  in  cement  like  bricks,  he  built  an 
enormous  column  of  corpses  in  Union  Square 
130 


LOADED  DOWN  WITH  LITERATURE 

towering  higher  than  any  building  in  New 
York.  He  established  his  headquarters  in  a 
Fifth  Avenue  palace  and  was  directing  the 
slaughter  of  all  men  who  owned  property, 
when  some  of  his  followers  got  jealous  of  his 
fine  position  and  killed  him  and  burned  the 
house.  By  that  time  everything  in  America 
was  destroyed,  and  the  hero  of  the  book,  hav- 
ing invented  an  air-ship,  flew  away  to  South 
Africa  to  escape  the  general  demolition.  This 
book  was  being  circulated  by  communists  as 
a  true  picture  of  what  the  country  was  coming 
to. 

These  pamphlets  came  into  my  hands  at  a 
time  when  work  was  getting  scarcer  every 
day  and  a  million  men  like  myself  were  mov- 
ing about  the  country  looking  for  jobs.  Then 
for  the  first  time  I  realized  my  need  for  a 
broader  education.  If  these  things  were  true, 
it  was  my  duty  to  stop  chasing  the  vanishing 
job  and  begin  to  organize  the  workers  so  that 
they  might  destroy  the  capitalists.  But  how 
could  I  know  whether  they  were  true?  I  had 
no  knowledge  of  past  history.  And  without 
knowing  the  past  how  could  I  judge  the  fu- 
ture? I  was  like  the  old  man  who  had  never 
seen  a  railroad  train.  His  sons  took  him 
131 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

thirty  miles  over  the  hills  and  brought  him 
to  the  depot  where  a  train  was  standing.  The 
old  man  looked  things  over  and  saw  that  the 
wheels  were  made  of  iron.  "It  will  never 
start,"  he  said.  He  knew  that  if  his  wagon 
had  heavy  iron  wheels,  his  team  could  never 
start  it.  But  his  sons  said:  "It  will  start  all 
right."  They  had  seen  it  before;  they  knew 
its  past  history.  Soon  the  train  started,  gath- 
ered speed  like  a  whirlwind  and  went  roar- 
ing away  down  the  track.  The  old  man  gazed 
after  it  and  then,  much  excited,  he  exclaimed, 
"It  will  never  stop !" 

The  wisest  head  is  no  judge  unless  it  has 
in  it  the  history  of  past  performances.  I  had 
not  studied  much  history  in  my  brief  school- 
ing. The  mills  called  me  because  they  needed 
men.  Good  times  were  there  when  I  arrived, 
and  as  for  hard  times,  I  was  sure  they  "would 
never  start."  Now  the  hard  times  were  upon 
us  and  panic  shook  the  ground  beneath  our 
feet.  "It  will  never  stop,"  men  cried.  Had 
they  studied  the  history  of  such  things  they 
would  have  known  that  hard  times  come  and 
hard  times  go,  starting  and  stopping  for 
definite  reasons,  like  the  railway  train. 

I  had  done  the  right  thing  in  quitting  school 
132 


LOADED  DOWN  WITH  LITERATURE 

and  going  to  the  puddling  furnaces  at  a  time 
when  we  needed  iron  more  than  we  needed 
education.  The  proverb  says,  "Strike  while 
the  iron  is  hot."  The  country  was  building, 
and  I  gave  it  iron  to  build  with.  Railroads 
were  still  pushing  out  their  mighty  arms  and 
stringing  their  iron  rails  across  the  western 
wheat  lands.  Bridges  were  crossing  the  Miss- 
issippi and  spanning  the  chasms  in  the  Rocky 
Mountains.  Chicago  and  New  York  were  ris- 
ing in  new  growth  with  iron  in  their  bones 
to  hold  them  high.  My  youth  was  spent  in 
giving  to  this  growing  land  the  element  its 
body  needed. 

Now  that  body  was  sick.  What  was  the 
matter  with  it?  Lacking  an  education,  I  was 
unprepared  to  say.  When  I  left  school  my 
theory  was  that  every  boy  should  learn  a 
trade  as  soon  as  possible.  Now  I  saw  that  a 
trade  was  not  enough.  A  worker  needs  an 
education,  also.  The  trade  conies  first,  per- 
haps, but  the  education  ought  to  follow  on  its 
heels. 

During  the  next  ten  years  of  my  life  I  was 
a  worker  and  a  student,  too.    My  motto  was 
that  every  one  should  have  at  least  a  high- 
school  education  and  a  trade. 
133 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE  PUDDLER  HAS  A  VISION 

THAT  caravan  of  railroad  cars  bearing  the 
happy  lodge  members  to  their  meeting  in  the 
Rockies,  had  started  a  train  of  thought  that 
went  winding  through  my  mind  ever  after. 
In  fancy  I  saw  the  envious  Bannerman  shak- 
ing his  fist  at  his  thriftier,  happier  brothers. 
Should  I  denounce  the  banding  together  of 
men  for  the  promotion  of  fun  and  good  fel- 
lowship? Were  these  men  hastening  the 
downfall  of  America  as  the  communist  pre- 
dicted? Is  not  good  fellowship  a  necessary 
feeling  in  the  hearts  of  civilized  men? 

Love  of  comrades  had  always  been  a  ruling 
passion  with  me.  I  joined  my  union  as  soon 
as  I  had  learned  my  trade,  the  Amalgamated 
Association  of  Iron,  Steel  and  Tin  Workers  of 
North  America.  It  was  a  long  name,  and  we 
liked  every  word  in  it.  We  felt  the  glow  of 
brotherhood,  and  as  I  said  before,  we  used  to 
share  our  jobs  with  the  brother  who  was  out 
134 


THE  PUDDLER  HAS  A  VISION 

of  work.  The  union  paid  a  weekly  benefit 
to  men  who  had  to  strike  for  better  working 
conditions.  At  that  time  there  were  no  death 
benefits  nor  any  fund  to  educate  the  children 
of  members  killed  in  the  mills.  When  such 
a  death  happened,  the  union  appointed  a 
committee  to  stand  at  the  office  window  on 
pay-day  and  ask  every  man  to  contribute 
something  from  his  wages.  There  is  a  chari- 
table spirit  among  men  who  labor  together 
and  they  always  gave  freely  to  any  fund  for 
the  widow  and  orphans.  This  spirit  is  the 
force  that  lifts  man  above  the  beasts  and 
makes  his  civilization.  There  is  no  mercy  in 
brute  nature.  The  hawk  eats  the  sparrow; 
the  fox  devours  the  young  rabbit;  the  cat 
leaps  from  under  a  bush  and  kills  the  mother 
robin  while  the  young  are  left  to  starve  in  the 
nest.  There  is  neither  right  nor  wrong  among 
the  brutes  because  they  have  no  moral  sense. 
They  do  not  kill  for  revenge  nor  torture  for 
the  love  of  cruelty,  as  Comrade  Bannerman 
would  in  praying  that  the  train  be  wrecked 
and  the  rich  men  burned  to  death  in  the  ruin. 
The  beasts  can  feel  no  pity,  no  sympathy,  no 
regret,  for  nature  gave  them  no  conscience. 
But  man  differs  from  all  creation  because  he 
135 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

has  a  moral  sense,  he  has  a  conscience.  My 
conscience  has  been  a  very  present  thing  with 
me  through  all  my  life.  I  am  a  praying  man. 
I  never  take  a  doubtful  step  until  I  have 
prayed  for  guidance.  . 

"You'll  never  get  anywhere,  Jim,"  fellows 
have  said  to  me,  "as  long  as  your  conscience 
is  so  darn  active.  To  win  in  this  world  you 
have  got  to  be  slick.  What  a  man  earns  will 
keep  him  poor.  It's  what  he  gains  that  makes 
him  rich."  If  this  is  so,  the  nation  with  the 
lowest  morals  will  have  the  most  wealth.  But 
the  truth  is  just  the  opposite.  The  richest  na- 
tions are  those  that  have  the  highest  moral 
sense. 

But  this  was  a  great  problem  for  a  young 
uneducated  man.  To  be  told  by  some  of  my 
fellows  that  dishonesty  was  the  only  road  to 
wealth,  and  to  be  shown  in  communist  docu- 
ments that  the  capitalists  of  America  were 
stealing  everything  from  the  workers,  put  a 
mighty  problem  up  to  me.  And  that's  what 
made  me  pray  for  guidance.  I  pray  because 
I  want  an  answer,  and  when  it  comes  I  recog- 
nize in  it  my  own  conscience.  Praying  ban- 
ishes all  selfish  thoughts  from  mind,  and  gives 
the  voice  of  conscience  a  chance  to  be  heard.  I 
136 


THE  PUDDLER  HAS  A  VISION 

pray  for  a  higher  moral  sense,  that  which 
lifts  man  above  beasts,  and  when  my  answer 
comes  and  I  feel  morally  right,  then  all  hell 
can't  make  me  knuckle  under.  For  civiliza- 
tion is  built  on  man's  morals  not  on  brute 
force  (as  Germany  learned  to  her  sorrow), 
and  I  fight  for  the  moral  law  as  long  as  there 
is  any  fight  left  in  me. 

Nature  planned  that  when  the  cat  ate  the 
mother  robin,  the  young  robins  in  the  nest 
must  starve.  Nature  had  other  robins  that 
would  escape  the  enemy.  But  among  men  it 
is  wrong  for  the  little  ones  to  suffer  when  the 
hand  that  feeds  them  is  destroyed.  For  man 
has  sympathy,  which  beasts  have  not.  Sym- 
pathy is  the  iron  fiber  in  man  that  welds  him 
to  his  fellows.  Envy  is  the  sulphur  that  pol- 
lutes these  bonds  and  makes  them  brittle. 
Suppose  some  master  puddler  of  humanity 
could  gather  thousands  of  men  into  a  melting- 
pot,  a  fraternity  whose  purpose  was  to  boil 
out  the  envy,  greed  and  malice  as  much  as 
possible,  and  purify  the  good  metal  of  human 
sympathy.  How  much  greater  the  social 
value  of  these  men  would  be.  Bound  together 
by  good  fellowship  and  human  sympathy 
these  men  could  pool  their  charity  and  build 
137 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

a  happy  city  where  all  the  children  of  their 
stricken  comrades  could  be  sent  to  school 
together,  there  to  learn  that  man  is  moral, 
that  the  strong  do  not  destroy  the  weak,  that 
the  nestling  is  not  left  to  fate,  but  that  the 
fatherless  are  fathered  by  all  men  whose 
hearts  have  heard  their  cry. 

This  vision  came  to  me  in  the  darkest  days 
of  my  life.  I  had  seen  the  children  of  my 
dead  comrades  scattered  like  leaves  from  a 
smitten  tree  never  to  meet  again.  I  had  left 
my  parents'  roof  to  be  buffeted  about  by 
strikes  and  unemployment,  and  I  feared  that 
our  home  would  be  lost  and  my  brothers 
scattered  forever.  The  voice  of  hate  was 
whispering  that  the  "classes"  would  ride 
down  the  children  of  the  poor,  and  with  this 
gloomy  thought  I  went  to  bed.  My  couch  was 
a  bed  of  coal  slack,  and  I  was  journeying  to 
a  mill  town  in  a  freight  car. 

As  we  rolled  along,  I  saw  in  a  vision  train 
after  train  of  lodge  men  going  to  some  happy 
city.  They  were  miners  and  steel  workers,  as 
well  as  clerks  and  teachers,  and  they  were 
banded  together,  not  like  Reds  to  overthrow 
the  wage  system,  but  to  teach  themselves  and 
their  children  how  to  make  the  wage  system 
138 


THE  PUDDLER  HAS  A  VISION 

shed  its  greatest  blessings  upon  all.  The  city 
they  were  going  to  was  one  they  had  built 
with  their  own  hands.  And  in  that  city  was 
a  school  where  every  trade  was  taught  to 
fatherless  children,  as  my  father  taught  his 
trade  to  me.  And  with  this  trade  each  child 
received  the  liberal  education  that  the  rich 
man  gives  his  son  but  which  the  poor  man 
goes  without.  This  was  the  wildest  fancy  I 
had  ever  entertained.  It  was  born  of  my  own 
need  of  knowledge.  It  was  a  dream  I  feared 
I  could  not  hope  to  realize. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

JOE  THE  POOR  BRAKE  MAN 

A  BRAKEMAN  stuck  his  head  in  the  end  win- 
dow of  the  box  car  and  shouted  at  me: 

"Where're  you  going?" 

"Birmingham,"  I  answered. 

"What  have  you  got  to  go  on?" 

I  had  some  money  in  my  belt,  but  I  would 
need  that  for  the  boarding-house  keeper  in 
the  Alabama  iron  town.  So  I  drew  some- 
thing from  my  vest  pocket  and  said: 

"This  is  all  I've  got  left." 

The  trainman  examined  it  by  the  dim  light 
at  the  window.  His  eye  told  him  that  it  was 
a  fine  gold  watch.  "All  right,"  he  said  as  he 
pocketed  it  and  went  away.  *  I  never  knew 
whether  I  cheated  the  brakeman  or  the  brake- 
man  cheated  me.  The  watch  wasn't  worth 
as  much  as  the  ride,  but  the  ride  wasn't  his 
to  sell. 

I  had  bought  the  watch  in  Cincinnati.  A 
fake  auction  in  a  pawnshop  attracted  my  at- 
140 


JOE  THE  POOR  BRAKEMAN 

tention  as  I  walked  along  a  street  near  the 
depot.  The  auctioneer  was  offering  a  "solid 
gold,  Swiss  movement,  eighteen  jeweled 
watch"  to  the  highest  bidder.  "This  watch 
belongs  to  my  friend  Joe  Coupling,"  he  said, 
"a  brakeman  on  the  B.  &  O.  He  was  in  a 
wreck  and  is  now  in  the  hospital.  Everybody 
knows  that  one  of  the  best  things  a  railroader 
has  is  his  watch.  He  only  parts  with  it  as  a 
matter  of  life  and  death.  Joe  has  got  to  sell 
his  watch  and  somebody  is  going  to  get  a 
bargain.  This  watch  cost  eighty-five  dollars 
and  you  couldn't  buy  the  like  of  it  to-day  for 
one  hundred.  How  much  am  I  offered?" 
Some  one  bid  five  dollars,  and  the  bidding 
continued  until  it  was  up  to  twenty-five  dol- 
lars. At  that  price  the  watch  was  declared 
sold,  and  I  strolled  on,  thinking  the  matter 
over.  I  figured  that  the  story  of  Joe  the 
injured  brakeman  must  be  false.  If  he  had 
an  eighty-five-dollar  watch  he  could  borrow 
forty  on  it.  Why  should  his  "friend"  have 
sold  it  outright  for  twenty-five?  The  fakery 
of  it  was  plain  to  any  one  who  stopped  to 
think.  Who  then  would  be  fool  enough  to 
pay  twenty-five  dollars  for  a  fake  watch  at  a 
side  auction?  Not  I.  I  was  too  wise.  "How 
141 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

easy  it  is,"  I  said  to  myself,  "to  solve  a  skin 
game." 

The  next  day  I  happened  to  pass  the  place 
again  and  they  were  selling  the  same  watch. 
I  listened  for  the  second  time  to  the  sad  story 
of  Joe  the  brakeman.  He  was  still  in  the 
hospital  and  still  willing  to  sacrifice  his 
eighty-five-dollar  gold  watch  to  the  highest 
bidder.  Just  for  fun  I  started  off  the  bidding 
at  two  dollars.  The  auctioneer  at  once 
knocked  down  the  watch  to  me  and  took  my 
money.  The  speed  of  it  dazed  me,  and  I 
stumbled  along  the  street  like  a  fool.  What 
was  the  game?  I  held  the  glittering  watch  in 
my  hand  and  gazed  at  it  like  a  hypnotized 
bird.  I  came  to  another  pawnshop  and  went 
in.  "What  will  you  give  me  on  this  watch?" 
I  asked.  The  pawnbroker  glanced  at  it  and 
said  he  couldn't  give  me  anything  but  advice. 

"I  can  buy  these  watches  for  three  dollars 
a  dozen.  They  are  made  to  be  sold  at  auc- 
tion. The  case  is  not  gold  and  the  works 
won't  run." 

I  had  been  caught  in  the  game  after  all. 

The  whole  show  had  been  put  on  for  me.  The 

men  who  did  the  bidding  the  first  day  were 

"with  the  show."    Their  scheme  was  to  get  a 

142 


JOE  THE  POOR  BRAKEMAN 

real  bid  from  me.  When  I  failed  to  bite,  they 
rung  down  the  curtain  and  waited  for  the 
next  come-on.  The  show  was  staged  again 
for  me  the  following  day,  and  that  time  they 
got  me.  I  had  the  "brakeman's  watch"  and 
he  had  the  laugh  on  me.  In  the  next  wreck 
that  Brakeman  Joe  got  into  I  wished  him  the 
same  luck  Comrade  Bannerman  wished  for 
the  trainload  of  plutocrats.  "If  I  should  meet 
Joe  now,"  I  said,  "I'd  gladly  give  him  back 
the  timepiece  that  he  prizes  so."  Let  us  hope 
that  the  brakeman  I  gave  the  watch  to  down 
in  Alabama  was  Brakeman  Joe. 

There  was  much  to  think  of  in  that  auction 
incident.  Experience  will  often  give  the  lie 
to  theory.  My  theory  of  the  game  was  good 
enough  for  me.  I  acted  on  my  theory,  and 
they  got  my  money.  Perhaps  the  theory  of 
Bannerman  was  wrong.  He  claimed  he  knew 
just  how  the  capitalists  were  robbing  labor. 
Suppose  we  backed  his  theory  with  some 
money  and  got  stung?  I  was  now  theory  shy 
and  I  have  stayed  away  from  theories  ever 
since. 

If  you  know  the  facts,  no  swindle  can 
deceive  you.  I  spend  my  life  in  getting  facts. 
I  now  have  seen  enough  to  know  that  capi- 
143 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

talism  is  not  a  swindle.  If  all  hands  labored 
hard  and  honestly  the  system  would  enrich 
us  all.  Some  workers  are  dishonest  and  they 
gouge  the  employers.  Some  employers  are 
dishonest  and  they  gouge  the  workers.  But 
whether  employer  or  employee  does  the  rob- 
bing, the  public  is  the  one  that's  robbed.  And 
they  are  both  members  of  the  public.  In  mak- 
ing the  world  poorer  they  are  rendering  a 
sorry  service  to  the  world. 

Dishonesty  is  the  thing  that  does  the  trick. 
And  it  is  not  confined  to  any  class.  It  was  not 
a  capitalist  but  a  slick  wind  worker  who 
robbed  me  by  the  watch  swindle.  He  had  to 
swing  his  jaw  for  hours  every  day  in  order  to 
steal  a  few  dollars. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

A  DROP  IN  THE  BUCKET  OF  BLOOD 

IN  BIRMINGHAM  I  found  a  job  in  a  rolling 
mill  and  established  myself  in  a  good  board- 
ing-house. In  those  days  a  "good  boarding- 
house"  in  iron  workers'  language  meant  one 
where  you  got  good  board.  One  such  was 
called  "The  Bucket  of  Blood."  It  got  its  name 
because  a  bloody  fight  occurred  there  almost 
every  day.  Any  meal  might  end  in  a  knock- 
down-and-drag-out.  The  ambulance  called 
there  almost  as  often  as  the  baker's  cart.  But 
it  was  a  "good"  boarding-house.  And  I  es- 
tablished myself  there. 

Good  board  consists  in  lots  of  greasy  meat, 
strong  coffee  and  slabs  of  sweet  pie  with 
gummy  crusts,  as  thick  as  the  palm  of  your 
hand.  At  the  Bucket  of  Blood  we  had  this 
delicious  fare  and  plenty  of  it.  When  a  man 
comes  out  of  the  mills  he  wants  quantity  as 
well  as  quality.  We  had  both  at  the  Bucket 
of  Blood,  and  whenever  a  man  got  knocked 
145 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

out  by  a  fist  and  was  carted  away  in  the  am- 
bulance, the  next  man  on  the  waiting  list  was 
voted  into  our  club  to  fill  the  vacancy.  We 
had  what  is  called  "family  reach"  at  the  table 
(both  in  feeding  and  fighting).  Each  man 
cut  off  a  big  quivering  hunk  of  roast  pork  or 
greasy  beef  and  passed  the  platter  to  his 
neighbor.  The  landlady  stood  behind  the 
chairs  and  directed  two  colored  girls  to  pour 
coffee  into  each  cup  as  it  was  emptied. 

These  cups  were  not  china  cups  with  little 
handles  such  as  you  use  in  your  home.  They 
were  big  "ironstone"  bowls  the  size  of  beer 
schooners,  such  as  we  used  to  see  pictured  at 
"Schmiddy's  Place,"  with  the  legend,  "Largest 
In  The  City,  5c."  (How  some  of  us  would 
like  to  see  those  signs  once  more!)  To  pre- 
vent the  handles  from  being  broken  off,  these 
cups  were  made  without  handles.  They  were 
so  thick  that  you  could  drop  them  on  the 
floor  and  not  damage  the  cups.  When  one 
man  hit  another  on  the  head  with  this  fragile 
china,  the  skull  cracked  before  the  teacup 
did.  The  "family  reach"  which  we  developed 
in  helping  ourselves  to  food,  was  sometimes 
used  in  reaching  across  the  table  and  felling 
a  man  with  a  blow  on  the  chin.  Kipling  has 
146 


A  DROP  IN  THE  BUCKET 

described  this  hale  and  hearty  type  of  strong 
man's  home  in  Fulta  Fisher's  Boarding- 
House  where  sailors  rested  from  the  sea. 

"A  play  of  shadows  on  the  wall, 

A  knife  thrust  unawares, 
And  Hans  came  down  (as  cattle  fall), 

Across  the  broken  chairs." 

But  the  boarders  did  not  fight  with  knives 
at  the  Bucket  of  Blood.  Knifing  is  not  an 
American  game.  We  fought  with  fists,  coffee 
cups  and  pieces  of  furniture,  after  the  furni- 
ture went  to  pieces.  We  were  not  fighting  to 
make  the  world  safe  for  democracy,  although 
we  were  the  most  democratic  fellows  in  the 
world.  We  slept  two  to  a  bed,  four  to  a  room. 
Not  always  the  same  four,  for  like  soldiers 
on  the  firing  line,  some  comrade  was  missing 
after  every  battle. 

These  fights  started  in  friendly  banter.  One 
fellow  would  begin  teasing  another  about  his 
girl.  The  whole  table  would  take  it  up,  every 
man  doing  his  best  to  insult  and  enrage  the 
victim.  It  was  all  fun  until  some  fellow's 
temper  broke  under  the  strain.  Then  a  rush, 
and  a  few  wild  swings  that  missed.  Then 
the  thud  of  a  blow  that  connected,  and  the 
fight  was  over.  These  men  had  arms  with 
147 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

the  strength  of  a  horse's  leg,  and  as  soon  as 
tlit-ir  "kick"  struck  solid  flesh,  the  man  hit 
was  knocked  out.  He  wouldn't  be  hack  for 
supper,  but  the  rest  of  us  would,  without  hav- 
ing our  appetites  disturbed  in  the  least.  I 
didn't  like  these  methods,  but  if  the  boys  did 
I  was  not  going  to  complain. 

My  practise  of  studying  at  night  offended 
my  roommates.  The  lamplight  got  in  their 
eyes.  There  were  three  fellows  in  the  room 
besides  myself.  For  several  nights  they 
advised  me  to  "cut  out  the  higher  education, 
douse  that  light  and  come  to  bed."  Finally 
they  spoke  about  it  in  the  daytime.  "Ma- 
jority rules,"  they  said,  "and  there's  three  of 
us  against  you.  We  can't  sleep  while  you 
have  that  lamp  burning.  The  light  keeps  us 
awake  and  it  also  makes  the  room  so  hot  that 
the  devil  couldn't  stand  it.  If  you  stay  up 
reading  to-night  we'll  give  you  the  bum's 
rush." 

I  was  so  interested  in  my  books  that  I 
couldn't  help  lingering  with  them  after  the 
other  fellows  went  to  bed.  Everything  grew 
quiet.  Suddenly  six  hands  seized  me  and 
flung  me  out  the  window.  It  was  a  second- 
story  window  and  I  carried  the  screen  with 
148 


A  DROP  IN  THE  BUCKET 

me.  But  as  it  was  full  of  air  holes  it  didn't 
make  a  very  competent  parachute.  I  landed 
with  a  thud  on  the  roof  of  the  woodshed, 
which,  being  old  and  soft  with  southern  moss, 
caved  in  and  carried  me  to  the  ground 
below — alive.  The  fellows  up  above  threw 
my  books  out  the  window,  aiming  them  at  my 
head.  They  threw  me  my  hat  and  coat  and 
my  valise,  and  I  departed  from  the  Bucket  of 
Blood,  and  took  up  my  abode  at  "The  Greasy 
Spoon." 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

A  GRUB  REFORMER  PUTS  US  OUT  OF  GRUB 

THE  Greasy  Spoon  isn't  an  appetizing 
name;  not  appetizing  to  men  who  live  a 
sedentary  life.  But  it  was  meant  as  a  lure  to 
men  who  live  by  muscular  toil.  It  sounded 
good  to  us  mill  workers  for,  like  Eskimos,  we 
craved  much  fat  in  our  diet.  We  were  great 
muscular  machines,  and  fat  was  the  fuel  for 
our  engines.  Muckraking  was  just  beginning 
in  those  days,  and  a  prying  reformer  came  to 
live  for  a  while  at  the  Greasy  Spoon.  He 
told  us  that  so  much  grease  in  our  food  would 
kill  us.  We  were  ignorant  of  dietetics;  all  we 
knew  was  that  our  stomachs  cried  for  plenty 
of  fat.  The  reformer  said  that  our  landlady 
fed  us  much  fat  meat  because  it  was  the 
cheapest  food  she  could  buy.  Milk,  eggs  and 
fruits  would  cost  more,  and  so  this  greedy 
cruel  woman  was  lining  her  pocket  at  the 
expense  of  our  lives. 

The  landlady  was  a  kindly  person,  and  she 
took  the  reformer's  advice.  She  banished 
150 


A  GRUB  REFORMER 

the  fat  pork,  and  supplied  the  table  with 
other  food  substitutes,  but  she  was  generous 
and  gave  us  plenty  of  them.  We  ate  this 
reformed  food  and  found  we  were  growing 
weaker  every  day  at  the  puddling  furnace. 
We  got  the  blues  and  became  sullen.  Grad- 
ually all  laughter  ceased  in  that  boarding- 
house.  We  even  felt  too  low  to  fight.  At  the 
end  of  two  weeks  there  was  one  general  cry: 
"Hog  fat,  and  plenty  of  it!"  Our  engines  had 
run  out  of  fuel;  and  now  we  knew  what  we 
needed.  We  were  so  crazy  for  bacon  that  if 
a  hog  had  crossed  our  path  we  would  have 
leaped  on  him  like  a  lion  and  eaten  him  alive. 

Fat  came  back  to  the  table,  and  the  Greasy 
Spoon  again  rang  with  laughter.  How  foolish 
that  reformer  was!  He  did  no  work  himself 
and  was  a  dyspeptic.  He  tried  to  force  his  diet 
upon  us,  and  he  made  us  as  weak  as  he  was. 
How  many  reformers  there  are  who  are  try- 
ing to  reshape  the  world  to  fit  their  own  weak- 
ness. I  never  knew  a  theorist  who  wasn't  a 
sick  man. 

To-day  we  understand  that  we  can't  run  a 

motor-car  after  the  gasoline  is  played  out. 

The  burning  of  the  oil  in  the  engine  gives  the 

power.    The  burning  of  fats  in  the  muscles 

151 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

gives  the  laborer  his  power.  Sugar  and 
starches  are  the  next  best  things  to  fat,  and 
that's  why  we  could  eat  the  thick  slabs  of 
sweet  pie.  We  relished  it  well  and  have 
burned  it  all  up  in  our  labor  in  the  mills.  We 
came  out  with  that  healthy  sparkle  that  dys- 
peptics never  know. 

When  we  realized  that  the  reformer  didn't 
know  what  he  was  talking  about,  and  that  in 
his  effort  to  help  us  he  was  hurting  us,  we 
saw  he  was  our  enemy,  and  we  gave  all  of  his 
ideas  the  "horse  laugh."  His  theory  that  the 
boarding-house  keepers  were  in  a  conspiracy 
to  rob  the  workers  by  feeding  them  pork 
instead  of  pineapples  turned  out  to  be  much 
like  all  the  "capitalist  conspiracies"  in  Com- 
rade Bannerman's  pamphlets.  I  am  glad  I 
have  lived  in  a  world  of  facts,  and  that  I  went 
therefrom  to  the  world  of  books.  For  I  have 
found  there  is  much  falsehood  taught  in 
books.  But  life  won't  tell  a  fellow  any  lies. 

A  man  who  knows  only  books  may  believe 
that  by  writing  a  new  prescription  he  can 
cure  the  world  of  what  ails  it.  A  man  who 
knows  life  knows  that  the  world  is  not  sick. 
Give  it  plenty  of  food  and  a  chance  to  work 
and  it  will  have  perfect  digestion. 
152 


CHAPTER  XXVII 
THE  PIE  EATER'S  PARADISE 

THE  Greasy  Spoon  was  all  right.  It  was  a 
peaceful  place.  The  landlady  was  Irish,  and 
her  motto  was :  "If  there's  any  fighting  to  be 
done  here  I'll  do  it  myself."  On  the  sideboard 
she  kept  a  carving  knife  as  big  as  a  cavalry 
saber.  Whenever  two  men  started  a  row,  she 
grabbed  this  carving  knife  and  with  a  scream 
like  a  panther  she  lit  into  them. 

"Stop  yer  fightin'  before  I  hack  your  hands 
off!" 

The  men  were  in  deadly  fear  of  her  because 
they  knew  she  meant  business.  The  sight  of 
that  swinging  knife  quelled  every  riot  before 
it  got  started.  We  fellows  were  like  children 
in  that  we  only  thought  of  one  thing  at  a 
time.  And  when  we  saw  the  landlady's  carv- 
ing knife  we  forgot  whatever  else  was  on  our 
minds.  This  woman  was  a  real  peacemaker. 
She  not  only  wanted  peace,  she  knew  how  to 
get  it.  Such  things  afford  us  lessons  that  are 
153 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

useful  all  our  lives.  This  woman  had  learned 
by  sad  experience  that  healthy  men  will  quar- 
rel and  thump  each  other;  that  these  fights 
put  men  in  the  hospital,  after  breaking  her 
dishes  and  splattering  her  tablecloths  with 
blood.  Hating  bloodshed,  she  prevented  it 
by  being  ever  ready  to  shed  blood  herself. 
She  stood  for  the  moral  law,  but  she  stood 
armed  and  ready. 

Impractical  men  have  told  me  that  right 
will  always  triumph  of  itself;  it  needs  no 
fighters  to  support  it.  The  man  who  believes 
that  is  ignorant,  and  such  ignorance  is  danger- 
ous. Right  is  always  trampled  down  when 
no  fighter  upholds  it.  But  men  will  fight  for 
right  who  will  not  fight  for  wrong.  And  so 
right  conquers  wrong  because  right  has  the 
most  defenders.  Let  no  man  shirk  the  battle 
because  he  thinks  he  isn't  needed. 

The  reason  a  woman  with  a  carving  knife 
was  strong  enough  to  put  a  stop  to  fighting  in 
the  Greasy  Spoon  was  this:  she  had  behind 
her  every  man  except  the  two  who  were  fight- 
ing. Had  either  of  those  men  struck  down 
the  woman,  then  twenty  other  men,  outraged 
by  such  a  deed,  would  then  and  there  have 
swarmed  upon  the  two  and  crushed  them. 
154 


THE  PIE  EATER'S  PARADISE 

The  woman  stood  for  right  and  she  always 
triumphed  because  she  had  (and  these  two 
knew  she  had)  the  biggest  bunch  of  fighters 
on  her  side. 

This  is  what  peace  means,  an  equilibrium 
between  forces.  It  is  the  natural  law, — God's 
way  of  keeping  peace.  And  any  plan  for 
World  Peace  that  is  builded  not  upon  this 
law  is  nothing.  Justice  must  stand  with  an 
upraised  sword.  When  two  states  quarrel 
she  must  admonish  them,  and  let  them  know 
that  should  they  overthrow  her,  all  good  na- 
tions would  rush  in  and  crush  them.  The 
same  law  that  keeps  peace  in  a  rowdy  board- 
ing-house will  keep  the  peace  of  the  world. 
For  what  is  this  world  but  a  big  wide  board- 
ing-house, and  all  the  nations  rough  and 
greedy  grabbers  at  the  table? 

I  left  the  Greasy  Spoon  and  went  to  the 
"Pie  Boarding-House."  The  Greasy  Spoon 
had  peace,  but  peace  is  not  enough.  After 
peace  comes  prosperity.  The  Pie  House 
represented  prosperity.  For  the  woman  who 
ran  it  knew  how  to  make  more  pies  than  the 
fellows  ever  heard  of.  You  see,  we  were  all 
from  the  British  Isles  where  they  have  pud- 
ding. The  pie  is  an  American  institution. 
155 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

Nobody  knows  how  to  make  pies  but  an 
American  housewife.  And  lucky  that  she 
does,  for  men  can  not  thrive  in  America  with- 
out pie.  I  do  not  mean  the  standardized, 
tasteless  things  made  in  great  pie  factories. 
I  refer  to  the  personally  conducted  pies  that 
women  used  to  make.  The  pioneer  wives  of 
America  learned  to  make  a  pie  out  of  every 
fruit  that  grows,  including  lemons,  and  from 
many  vegetables,  including  squash  and  sweet 
potatoes,  as  well  as  from  vinegar  and  milk 
and  eggs  and  flour.  Fed  on  these  good  pies 
the  pioneers — is  there  any  significance  in  the 
first  syllable  of  the  word — hewed  down  the 
woods  and  laid  the  continent  under  the  plow. 
Some  men  got  killed  and  their  widows  started 
boarding-houses.  Here  we  workers  fed  on 
proper  pie,  and  we  soon  changed  this  wooden 
land  into  a  land  of  iron.  Now  the  pie  is  pass- 
ing out  and  we  are  feeding  on  French  pastry. 
Is  our  downfall  at  hand? 

Life  in  the  Pie  Boarding-House  was  a  nev- 
er-ending delight.  You  never  knew  when  you 
sat  down  at  the  table  what  kind  of  pie  would 
be  dealt  you.  Some  of  the  fellows  had  been 
there  half  a  year  and  swore  that  they  had 
seen  fifty-seven  varieties  and  were  expect- 
156 


THE  PIE  EATER'S  PARADISE 

ing  new  ones  at  any  meal.  The  crowd  here 
was  a  selected  crowd.  It  was  made  up  of  the 
pie  connoisseurs  of  mill-town.  Word  was 
quietly  passed  out  among  the  wisest  fellows  to 
move  to  this  boarding-house  and  get  a  liberal 
education  in  pie.  So  it  was  a  selected  and 
well-behaved  crowd.  They  didn't  want  to 
start  any  rumpus  and  thus  lose  their  places 
at  this  attractive  table. 

And  that  is  one  way  that  virtue  is  its  own 
reward.  Only  the  well-behaved  fellows  were 
tipped  off  to  the  pie  bonanza.  From  this  I 
learned  that  the  better  manners  you  have, 
the  better  fare  you  will  get  in  this  world.  I 
had  steadily  risen  from  the  "Bucket  of 
Blood,"  through  the  "Greasy  Spoon"  to  a  seat 
at  the  cherished  "Pie"  table.  Here  the  cups 

y^.S 

were  so  thin  that  you  couldn't  break  a  man's       -dv 

• 

head  with  them.    I  was  steadily  rising  in  the    ^v 
social  world. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

CAUGHT  IN  A  SOUTHERN  PEONAGE  CAMP 

IT  WAS  while  I  was  in  Birmingham  that  the 
industrial  depression  reached  rock  bottom. 
In  the  depth  of  this  industrial  paralysis  the 
iron  workers  of  Birmingham  struck  for  bet- 
ter pay.  I,  with  a  train  load  of  other  strikers, 
went  to  Louisiana  and  the  whole  bunch  of  us 
were  practically  forced  into  peonage.  It  was 
a  case  of  "out  of  the  frying  pan  into  the  fire." 
We  had  been  saying  that  the  mill  owners  had 
driven  us  "into  slavery,"  for  they  had  made 
us  work  under  bad  conditions;  but  after  a 
month  in  a  peon  camp,  deep  in  the  swamps  of 
Louisiana,  we  knew  more  about  slavery  than 
we  did  before.  And  we  knew  that  work  in 
the  rolling  mills,  bad  as  it  was,  was  better  than 
forced  labor  without  pay.  To-day  when  I 
hear  orators  rolling  out  the  word  "slavery"  in 
connection  with  American  wages  and  working 
conditions,  I  have  to  laugh.  For  any  man 
who  has  ever  had  a  taste  of  peonage,  to  say 
158 


CAUGHT  IN  A  PEONAGE  CAMP 

nothing  of  slavery,  knows  that  the  wage  sys- 
tem is  not  real  slavery;  it's  not  the  genuine, 
lash-driven,  bloodhound-hunted,  swamp-sick 
African  slavery.  None  is  genuine  without 
Simon  Legree  and  the  Louisiana  blood- 
hounds. The  silk-socked  wage  slave,  toiling 
eight  hours  for  six  dollars,  is  not  the  genu- 
ine old  New  Orleans  molasses  slave.  He  may 
carry  a  band  and  give  a  daily  street  parade, 
but  if  he's  not  accompanied  by  Simon  Legree 
and  the  bloodhounds,  he  is  not  a  genuine 
Uncle  Tom,  his  slavery  is  less  than  skin  deep. 
You  can't  fool  me.  I  know  what  real  slavery 
is.  I  know  as  much  about  slavery  as  the  man 
that  made  it.  He's  the  guy  that  taught  me.  I 
worked  under  Simon  Legree  in  Louisiana. 

On  the  way  to  New  Orleans  we  paused  at 
a  siding,  and  a  native  asked  me,  "Who  are  all 
them  men,  and  which  way  are  they  goin'?" 
I  told  him  "which  way"  we  were  going,  and 
that  we  were  needing  jobs.  He  replied: 

"You-all  are  comin'  down  hyah  now  look- 
ing for  food  and  work.  In  '65  you  was  down 
hyah  lookin'  fo'  blood!" 

When  we  reached  the  great  city  on  the 
Mississippi,  we  scattered  over  the  town  look- 
ing for  jobs.  I  saw  a  pile  of  coal  in  the  street 
159 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

before  a  boarding-house.  I  asked  for  the  job 
of  carrying  in  the  coal.  There  were  two  tons 
of  it.  I  toted  it  in  and  was  paid  a  dollar. 
New  Orleans  was  a  popular  winter  resort 
where  northerners  came  to  escape  the  severe 
cold  of  the  North  Atlantic  States.  I  was  given 
the  job  of  yard-man  in  this  boarding-house. 
I  carried  in  groceries,  peeled  potatoes, 
scrubbed  the  kitchen  floor  and  built  fires 
each  evening  in  the  guests'  rooms.  Each 
room  had  a  grate,  and  I  carried  up  kindling 
and  coal  for  all  of  them.  For  this  work  I 
received  a  dollar  a  day,  with  two  meals  (din- 
ner and  supper)  and  was  permitted  to  carry 
away  from  the  kitchen  all  the  cooked  food 
that  remained  after  the  guests  had  eaten. 
This  privilege  had  grown  out  of  the  custom  of 
the  colored  help  in  the  South  having  their 
"man"  to  feed.  I  had  several  men  to  feed. 
My  "gang"  was  still  looking  for  work  and  not 
finding  any.  Times  were  desperate.  For  five 
cents  a  man  could  get  a  glass  of  beer  and 
floor  room  to  sleep  on  in  a  lodging-house  for 
homeless  men.  This  was  called  a  "Five  Cent 
Flop"  house.  My  pals  were  not  able  at  times 
to  raise  the  five  cents  a  day  to  buy  sleeping 
quarters.  It  was  late  fall  and  too  cold  to 
160 


CAUGHT  IN  A  PEONAGE  CAMP 

sleep  in  the  "jungle"  down  by  the  levee.  The 
poor  fellows  were  able  to  stave  off  starvation 
by  visiting  various  free  lunches  during  the 
day.  Every  night  I  arrived  with  my  dollar, 
and  that  meant  beer  and  beds  for  a  score.  I 
also  brought  along  a  flour  sack  half  full  of 
biscuits,  cold  pancakes,  corn  bread,  chicken 
necks  and  wings  and  scraps  of  roasts  and 
steaks.  These  hungry  men,  with  their  schoon- 
ers of  beer,  made  a  feast  of  these  scraps.  My 
loyalty  in  coming  every  night  and  giving  them 
everything  I  could  scrape  together  touched 
them  deeply.  They  regarded  me  as  deserv- 
ing special  honor,  and  while  they  believed 
in  democracy  as  a  general  proposition,  they 
voted  that  it  would  be  carrying  equality  too 
far  if  they  permitted  me  to  get  no  more  out 
of  my  work  than  all  the  rest  got.  So  they 
decided  that  I  was  to  have  a  fifteen-cent  bed 
each  night  instead  of  a  five-cent  flop  with  the 
rest  of  them.  And  I  was  assigned  to  the  royal 
suite  of  that  flop  house,  which  consisted  of  a 
cot  with  a  mosquito  bar  over  it. 

At  this  time  they  were  holding  "kangaroo" 
court  in  the  New  Orleans  jail.    Every  vagrant 
picked  up  by  the  police  was  tried  and  sen- 
tenced and  shipped  out  to  a  chain-gang  camp. 
161 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

Nearly  every  man  tried  was  convicted.  And 
there  were  plenty  of  camp  bosses  ready  to 
"buy"  every  vagrant  the  officers  could  run 
in.  My  bunch  down  at  the  flop  house  was 
in  deadly  terror  of  being  "kangarooed"  and 
sent  to  a  peon  camp  in  the  rice  swamps. 

One  day  when  I  was  renewing  the  fuel  in 
the  room  of  a  Mrs.  Hubbard  from  Pittsburgh, 
I  found  no  one  in  the  apartment  and  Mrs. 
Hubbard's  pearls  and  other  jewels  lying  on 
the  dresser.  Immediately  I  was  terrified  with 
thought  of  the  kangaroo  court.  I  knew  that 
the  jewels  were  valued  at  several  thousands 
of  dollars.  If  I  went  away  some  one  else 
might  come  into  the  room  and  possibly 
steal  the  jewels,  for  they  were  lying  in  plain 
sight  and  were  valuable  enough  to  tempt  a 
weak-willed  person.  I  sounded  an  alarm  and 
stayed  in  the  doorway.  I  refused  to  leave  the 
room  until  Mrs.  Hubbard  returned  and 
counted  her  valuables. 

She  found  them  all  there  and  thanked  me 
for  guarding  them.  She  said  it  was  by  an 
oversight  that  she  had  gone  away  without 
locking  up  her  treasures.  She  asked  me  how 
she  should  reward  me.  I  told  her  that  I  was 
already  rewarded,  for  I  had  guarded  her 
162 


CAUGHT  IN  A  PEONAGE  CAMP 

jewels  in  order  to  protect  myself  from  being 
suspected  of  their  theft  and  so  kangarooed 
into  a  slave-camp. 

But  in  spite  of  all  my  precautions,  I  landed 
there  after  all.  The  gang  down  at  the  flop 
house  was  dazzled  by  an  employment  agent, 
who  offered  to  ship  them  out  into  the  rice 
country  to  work  on  the  levee  for  a  dollar  a 
day  and  cakes.  The  men  were  wild  for  a 
square  meal  and  the  feel  of  a  dollar  in  their 
jeans.  So  they  all  shipped  out  to  the  river 
levee  and  I  went  along  with  the  gang. 

As  our  train  rattled  over  the  trestles  and 
through  the  cypress  swamps  the  desperate 
iron  workers  were  singing: 

"We'll  work  a  hundred  days,  ' 
And  we'll  get  a  hundred  dollars, 

And  then  go  North, 
And  all  be  rich  and  happy !" 

When  we  reached  the  dyke-building  camp 
I  learned  how  ignorant  I  really  was.  I  could 
not  do  the  things  the  older  men  could.  I  was 
young  and  familiar  only  with  the  tools  of 
an  iron  puddler.  The  other  men  were  ten 
years  older  and  had  acquired  skill  in  han- 
dling mule-teams  and  swinging  an  ax.  They 
saw  I  couldn't  do  anything,  so  they  appointed 
163 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

me  water  carrier.  The  employing  boss  was 
what  is  now  called  hard-boiled.  He  was  a 
Cuban,  with  the  face  of  a  cutthroat.  Doubt- 
less he  was  the  descendant  of  the  Spanish- 
English  buccaneers  who  used  to  prowl  the 
Caribbean  Sea  and  make  headquarters  at 
New  Orleans.  Beside  this  pirate  ancestry  I'll 
bet  he  was  a  direct  descendant  of  Simon 
Legree.  He  suspected  that  I  couldn't  do  much 
in  a  dyking  camp,  so  he  swarmed  down  on  me 
the  second  week  I  was  there  and  ordered  me 
to  quit  the  water-carrying  job  and  handle  a 
mule  team  and  a  scraper.  I  saw  death  put 
an  arm  around  my  neck  right  then  and  there. 
But  I  wouldn't  confess  that  I  couldn't  drive  a 
team. 

I  put  the  lines  over  my  head,  said  "Go 
'long"  as  I  had  heard  other  muleteers  say, 
and,  grasping  the  handles  of  the  scraper,  I 
scooped  up  a  slip  load  of  clay.  My  arms  were 
strong  and  this  was  no  trick  at  all.  But  get- 
ting the  load  was  not  the  whole  game.  The 
hardest  part  was  to  let  go.  I  guided  the  lines 
with  one  hand  and  steadied  the  scraper  with 
the  other  as  I  drove  up  on  the  dump.  Then 
I  heaved  up  on  the  handles,  the  scraper 
turned  over  on  its  nose  and  dumped  the  load. 
164 


CAUGHT  IN  A  PEONAGE  CAMP 

But  that  isn't  all  it  dumped.  The  mules  shot 
ahead  when  the  load  was  released,  and  the 
lines  around  my  neck  jerked  me  wrong  side 
up.  The  handle  of  the  scraper  hit  me  a  stun- 
ning blow  in  the  face  and  the  whole  contrap- 
tion dragged  over  my  body  bruising  me  fright- 
fully. I  staggered  to  my  feet  with  one  eye 
blinded  by  the  blood  that  flowed  from  a  gash 
in  my  brow.  Simon  Legree  cursed  me  hand- 
somely and  told  me  I  was  fired.  I  asked  him 
where  I  would  get  my  pay,  and  he  told  me  he 
was  paying  me  a  compliment  by  letting  me 
walk  out  of  that  camp  alive.  I  went  to  the 
cook  shack  and  washed  the  blood  off  my  face. 
I  was  a  pretty  sick  boy.  The  cook  was  a 
native  and  was  kind  to  me. 

"Boy,  you're  liable  to  get  lockjaw  from  that 
cut,"  he  said.  "I'll  put  some  of  this  horse  lini- 
ment on  it  and  it'll  heal  up."  He  then  band- 
aged it  with  court-plaster. 

"It's  a  long  way  back  to  New  Orleans,"  the 
cook  concluded.  "And  you  might  as  well 
have  something  to  keep  your  ribs  from  hitting 
together."  He  cut  off  a  couple  of  pounds  of 
raw  bacon  and  put  it  in  my  pocket  together 
with  a  "bait"  of  Plowboy  tobacco.  And  so  I 
hit  the  road.  When  I  came  to  the  place  where 
165 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

my  pals  were  working,  cutting  willows  along 
the  levee,  I  told  them  of  my  plight 

"Never  mind,  boy,"  they  said.  "You  go 
back  to  New  Orleans  and  wait  for  us.  After 
we've  worked  our  hundred  days  to  get  a  hun- 
dred dollars  each,  we  will  work  a  few  days 
more  to  get  a  hundred  dollars  for  you.  Then 
we'll  all  go  north  and  be  rich  together." 

I  began  footing  it  thirty-five  miles  to  the 
city.  I  decided,  like  Queen  Isabella,  to  pawn 
my  jewels  to  enable  me  to  discover  America 
again.  I  had  an  old  ring  and  I  met  a  darky 
who  had  a  quarter.  He  got  my  ring.  After 
tramping  all  day  I  was  exhausted.  I  came  to 
a  negro  cabin  and  went  in  and  offered  the 
"mammy"  a  pound  of  bacon  for  a  pound  of 
corn  pone.  I  further  bargained  to  give  the 
first  half  of  my  other  pound  of  bacon  if  she'd 
cook  the  second  half  for  me  to  eat.  She 
cooked  my  share  of  the  bacon  and  set  it  and 
the  corn  bread  on  the  table.  I  ate  heartily  for 
a  while,  but  after  two  or  three  slices  of  the 
bacon,  I  was  fed  up  on  it.  She  hadn't  cooked 
enough  of  the  grease  out  of  it.  I  began  feed- 
ing this  bacon  to  a  pickininny  who  sat  beside 
me. 

"Man,  don't  give  away  your  meat,"  the 
166 


CAUGHT  IN  A  PEONAGE  CAMP 

mammy  said.    I  told  her  that  I  had  had  all 
I  wanted.    Then  she  said  to  the  pickininny: 

"Child,  doan  eat  that  meat.  Save  it  foh 
you  papa  when  he  come  home." 

When  I  got  into  New  Orleans  the  next 
morning,  I  traded  my  Plowboy  tobacco  for  a 
bar  of  laundry  soap.  With  my  twenty-five 
cents  I  bought  a  cotton  undershirt.  Then  I 
went  into  the  "jungle"  at  Algiers,  a  town 
across  the  river  from  New  Orleans,  and  built 
a  fire  in  the  jungle  (a  wooded  place  where 
hoboes  camp)  and  heated  some  water  in  an 
old  tin  pail  I  found  there.  Then  I  took  off  all 
my  clothes  and  threw  my  underwear  away. 
A  negro  who  stood  watching  me  said : 

"White  man,  are  you  throwing  them 
clothes  away?" 

"I  certainly  am,"  I  replied. 

"Why,  them  underclothes  is  northern  un- 
derclothes. Them's  woolen  clothes.  Them's 
the  kind  of  underclothes  I  like." 

"You  wouldn't  like  that  bunch  of  under- 
clothes," I  said. 

"Why  not?" 

"Because  if  you  look  in  the  seams  you  will 
find  something  that  is  unseemly.  I've  been 
out  in  a  levee  camp." 

167 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

"Hush  mah  mouf,  white  man,"  laughed  the 
negro.  "Them  little  things  would  never 
bother  a  Louisiana  nigger.  Why  we  have 
them  things  with  us  all  the  time.  We  just 
call  'em  our  little  companions." 

He  picked  up  the  garments  and  walked  off 
proud  and  happy.  I  took  my  soap  and  warm 
water  and  scrubbed  myself  from  crown  to 
heel.  I  put  my  clothing  in  the  pail  with  more 
soap  and  water  and  boiled  the  outfit  thor- 
oughly. 

Then  I  went  back  to  New  Orleans  and  got 
my  old  job  in  the  boarding-house.  I  saved  all 
my  money  except  my  fifteen  cents  for  the 
nightly  flop.  A  month  later  my  gang  came 
roaring  back  from  the  peon  camp.  They  had 
worked  thirty  days  and  had  not  got  a  cent. 
Slave-driver  Legree  had  driven  them  out 
when  they  demanded  a  reckoning.  They 
were  lucky  to  escape  with  their  lives,  their 
cooties  and  their  appetites.  Instead  of  financ- 
ing me,  I  had  to  finance  them  again.  They 
finally  got  cleaned  up  and  we  all  went  back 
to  Birmingham,  where  the  strike  was  over. 

"Show  us  that  spieler,"  they  said,  "who  told 
us  the  wage  system  was  the  worst  kind  of 
slavery.    If  daily  wages  is  slavery,  God  grant 
that  they  never  set  us  free  again." 
168 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

A  SICK,  EMACIATED  SOCIAL  SYSTEM 

THE  hard  times  I  have  been  describing  were 
in  the  early  nineties.  The  year  before  there 
had  been  a  financial  crash.  Nobody  seemed 
to  know  what  was  the  matter  at  the  time,  but 
it  has  since  been  learned  that  the  hard  times 
were  the  fruit  of  crop  failures,  if  one  can  call 
failure  fruit.  All  over  the  world  bad  years 
had  destroyed  the  harvests.  This  great  loss 
of  foodstuffs  was  exactly  the  same  as  if 
armies  in  war  had  ravaged  the  fields.  Farm- 
ers had  to  borrow  money  to  buy  food.  They 
had  no  other  buying  power.  So  trade  lan- 
guished, credit  was  strained,  and  finally 
came  the  financial  collapse.  It  happened 
after  the  good  crop  years  were  returning. 
That's  why  the  people  could  not  understand 
it.  Farmers  were  raising  crops  again,  but 
labor  was  idle  and  could  not  buy  bread. 

The  lesson  is  this,  when  commerce  is 
starved  down  to  a  certain  point,  it  goes  to 
pieces.  Then  when  the  food  comes  it  can 
169 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

not  assimilate  it.  It  is  like  a  man  who  has 
been  without  food  for  thirty  days.  His  mus- 
cles have  disappeared,  his  organs  have 
shrunk,  he  can  not  walk;  he  is  only  skin  and 
bones.  The  disappearance  of  the  muscles  is 
like  the  disappearance  of  labor's  jobs  in  hard 
times.  The  shrinkage  of  the  vital  organs  is 
like  the  shrinkage  of  capital  and  values. 
When  the  starved  man  is  faced  with  food  he 
can  not  set  in  and  eat  a  regular  dinner.  He 
must  be  fed  on  a  tcaspoonful  of  soup,  and  it 
is  many  months  before  his  muscles  come 
back,  his  organs  regain  their  normal  size  and 
he  is  a  well-fed  man  again.  So  it  is  with  the 
industrial  state.  It  can  be  starved  by  crop 
failures,  by  war  waste  or  by  labor  slacking 
on  the  job.  Anything  that  lessens  the  out- 
put of  field  and  factory,  whether  it  be  heav- 
en's drought  or  man's  loafing,  starves  the 
economic  state  and  starves  all  men  in  it.  If 
crop  failure  should  last  long  enough,  as  it 
does  in  China,  millions  of  men  would  die.  If 
war  lasts  long  enough,  as  it  did  in  Austria, 
millions  of  citizens  must  starve.  If  labor 
should  try  slacking,  as  it  did  in  Russia,  the 
economic  state  would  starve  to  death  and  the 
workers  die  with  it. 

170 


A  SICK  SOCIAL  SYSTEM 

Men  who  have  been  through  strikes  and 
lockouts  until  they  have  been  reduced  to  rags 
and  hunger  place  no  trust  in  the  Russian 
theory  that  men  can  quit  work  and  loaf  their 
way  to  wealth.  We  loafed  our  way  to  hunger, 
misery  and  peonage.  We  saw  that  the  whole 
world  would  come  to  our  fate,  if  all  should 
follow  our  example.  Luckily  we  won  our 
point,  so  we  went  back  to  work  and  helped 
feed  the  starved  social  state,  and  in  a  few 
years  America  was  rich  again.  And  Ameri- 
ca continued  rich  and  fat  until  the  World 
War  wastage  shrank  her  to  skin  and  bones 
again.  Much  of  her  muscle  has  disappeared 
(1921 :  five  million  workers  are  idle)  and  she 
must  be  nursed  back  by  big  crops,  and  big 
output  by  labor  before  she  will  be  strong 
enough  to  reabsorb  into  her  system  every 
muscle  in  America. 

That's  my  belief.  That's  my  gospel.  I  did 
not  make  this  gospel.  It  is  God's  law  and  we 
can  not  alter  it.  If  I  were  asked  to  write  the 
BIBLE  OF  LABOR,  this  chapter  would  be  the 
law  and  the  prophets.  And  from  these  truths 
I  would  advise  each  man  to  write  his  own  Ten 
Commandments. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

BREAKING  INTO  THE  TIN  INDUSTRY 

I  DECIDED  to  leave  Birmingham  as  soon  as 
my  stomach  had  got  used  to  regular  meals 
and  my  pocket  knew  what  real  money  felt 
like  again. 

The  dry  years  had  ended  and  once  more 
the  northern  farms  were  yielding  mammoth 
crops.  But  the  country  was  so  sick  that  it 
couldn't  sit  up  and  eat  as  it  ought  to.  So  the 
farmers  were  selling  their  crops  at  steadily 
falling  prices.  This  drove  some  of  them 
frantic.  They  couldn't  pay  interest  on  their 
mortgaged  farms,  and  they  were  seeking  to 
find  "the  way  out"  by  issuing  paper  money, 
or  money  from  some  cheap  metal  with  which 
they  could  repudiate  their  debts.  Banks 
could  not  collect  their  loans,  merchants  could 
not  get  money  for  their  goods,  manufacturers 
were  swamped  by  their  pay-rolls  and  had  to 
discharge  their  men.  Coxey  was  raising  a 
great  army  of  idle  men  to  march  on  Washing- 
172 


THE  TIN  INDUSTRY 

ton  and  demand  that  the  government  should 
feed  and  clothe  the  people. 

All  my  savings  had  long  since  gone,  and 
from  the  high  life  in  the  Pie  Boarding-House 
I  had  descended  to  my  days  of  bread  and 
water.  All  men  were  in  a  common  misery. 
If  a  hobo  managed  to  get  a  steak  and  cook  it 
in  the  bushes  by  the  railroad  track,  the  smell 
of  it  would  draw  a  score  of  hungry  men  into 
the  circle  of  his  firelight.  It  was  a  trying 
time,  and  it  took  all  the  fortitude  I  had  to 
look  hopefully  forward  toward  a  day  when 
things  would  begin  picking  up  and  the  wheels 
of  industry  would  whirl  again.  The  idle 
men  who  had  camped  by  the  railroads  had 
drunk  their  water  from,  and  cooked  their 
mulligan  stews  in,  tomato  cans.  The  tin  can 
had  become  the  badge  of  hoboing.  The  tin 
trade  was  new  in  America  and  I  foresaw  a 
future  in  the  industry,  for  all  kinds  of  food 
were  now  being  put  up  in  tin,  whereas  when 
I  was  a  child  a  tin  can  was  rarely  seen. 

I  decided  that  two  trades  were  better  than 
one,  and  I  would  learn  the  tin  plate  trade.  I 
went  to  Elwood,  Indiana,  and  found  a  place 
there  in  a  tin  mill.  My  knowledge  of  pud- 
dling, heating  and  rolling,  occasionally  work- 
173 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

ing  in  a  sheet  mill  similar  to  a  tin  mill,  pre- 
pared me  for  this  new  work.  In  tin  making 
a  piece  of  wrought  iron  is  rolled  thin  and  then 
covered  with  a  thinner  coating  of  pure  tin. 
After  this  is  done  the  plate  remains  soiled 
and  discolored,  and  the  next  process  is  to 
remove  the  stain  and  polish  the  tin  until  it 
shines  like  silver. 

To  have  a  job  and  eat  pie  again  made  me 
happy.  Our  union  contained  several  hun- 
dred members,  so  I  had  a  lot  of  prospective 
friends  to  get  acquainted  with.  I  was  then 
nearly  twenty-one  and  a  pretty  good  mixer; 
I  liked  men  and  enjoyed  mingling  with  them 
and  learning  all  I  could  from  what  they  told 
me.  When  they  drifted  into  a  saloon  I  went 
along  for  the  company.  I  did  not  care  to 
drink,  so  I  would  join  some  impromptu 
quartet  and  we  would  sing  popular  songs 
while  the  other  fellows  cheered  us  with  the 
best  will  in  the  world.  A  drink  of  beer  or  two 
heightens  a  man's  appreciation  of  music,  and 
the  way  the  boys  applauded  my  singing  makes 
me  rather  regret  the  Volstead  Act.  It  queered 
my  act.  Since  beer  disappeared  nobody  has 
asked  me  to  sing.  Prohibition  may  be  good 
for  the  health  but  it  is  sure  death  to  art. 
174 


THE  TIN  INDUSTRY 

Those  were  happy  days.  But  just  when  all 
my  troubles  seemed  ended  and  the  rainbow 
of  promise  in  the  sky,  a  new  cloud  appeared, 
black  and  threatening.  In  fact  it  swept  down 
like  a  tornado.  The  men  decided  to  strike. 

A  strike!  Of  all  things!  We  owned  about 
the  only  jobs  in  Indiana.  Our  strike  wouldn't 
last  long — for  the  mills.  For  us  it  would  last 
forever.  The  day  wre  walked  out,  others 
would  walk  in.  And  it  would  be  so  small  a 
part  of  Coxey's  army  that  the  main  body 
would  march  on  and  never  miss  it.  I  had 
just  gone  through  that  long,  soul-killing  pe- 
riod of  idleness  and  had  barely  managed  to 
find  a  job  before  I  collapsed.  Now  that  we 
were  to  strike  I  would  have  to  push  that  job 
aside  and  sink  back  into  the  abyss. 

In  reaching  Elwood,  I  had  tramped  from 
Muncie,  Indiana,  to  Anderson,  a  long  weary 
walk  for  one  whose  feet,  like  mine,  were  not 
accustomed  to  it.  From  Anderson  I  tramped 
to  Frankton,  and  there  I  caught  a  freight  and 
rode  the  bumpers  to  Elwood.  The  train  took 
me  right  into  the  mill.  It  was  summer  and 
the  mill  had  been  shut  down  by  the  hard 
times.  The  boss  was  there  looking  over  the 
machinery.  They  were  getting  ready  to  start 
175 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

up.  I  faced  him  and  he  said :  "Do  you  want 
a  job?" 

"Yes,"  I  said. 

"What  at?    Greasing  up  to-night,"  he  said. 

Weary  and  hungry  as  I  was  from  my  hobo- 
ing, I  went  right  to  work,  and  all  night  I,  with 
a  few  others,  greased  the  bearings.  The  next 
day  he  gave  me  a  job  as  a  catcher.  A  catcher 
is  one  who  seizes  the  rolled  plate  as  it  comes 
out  and  throws  it  back  to  the  roller.  It  has  to 
be  rolled  many  times.  The  boss  who  gave  me 
this  much-wanted  job  was  Daniel  G.  Reid, 
who  afterward  became  one  of  the  big  men  in 
the  tin  industry. 

After  I  became  Secretary  of  Labor  I  was  a 
dinner  guest  at  the  White  House.  When  I 
arrived  the  President  said:  "Here's  an  old 
friend  of  yours."  To  my  surprise  and  keen 
pleasure  President  Harding  led  forward  my 
old  boss,  Daniel  G.  Reid.  There  was  much 
laughing  and  old-time  talk  between  us.  "Do 
you  recall,"  said  Mr.  Reid,  "how  during  the 
tin  strike  of  '96,  you  steered  to  the  lodge  room 
and  unionized  men  who  came  to  take  the 
place  of  the  strikers?"  Mr.  Reid  thought  this 
was  a  great  joke.  He  had  always  been  favor- 
able to  ending  the  strike  and  signing  the  men's 
176 


THE  TIN  INDUSTRY 

agreement,  but  for  a  long  time  had  been  de- 
terred by  his  partners.  Mr.  Reid  in  nearly 
every  conference  was  selected  for  chairman, 
and  this  was  considered  by  the  employers  a 
very  fine  tribute  of  respect  and  confidence. 
Turning  to  the  president,  Mr.  Reid  said:  "If 
Jim  is  as  industrious  in  your  service  as  he  was 
in  the  Elwood  tin  mill  you  have  got  a  good 
secretary.  Jim  knew  more  about  the  tin  plate 
business  when  he  was  a  worker  than  any 
other  man  in  America.  I  wanted  to  get  him 
to  join  our  sales  department  but  he  declined 
my  offer!" 

When  the  matter  of  the  Elwood  strike  was 
referred  to  the  next  regular  meeting  I  had 
been  working  only  three  weeks.  I  wrote  to 
my  father  in  Sharon  asking  for  his  counsel  on 
the  subject.  He  wrote  back:  "Inasmuch  as  it 
isn't  a  question  of  wages  or  rules,  I'd  vote  to 
slay  on  the  job  and  wait  for  my  pay.  There's 
no  pay  out  here  to  be  had  even  by  waiting.  The 
mill  is  down,  and  if  we  hadn't  raised  a  big 
potato  crop  we  wouldn't  know  where  to  look 
for  our  next  meal." 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

UNACCUSTOMED  AS  I  AM  TO  PUBLIC  SPEAKING 

WITH  father's  warning  on  my  mind  I  went 
to  the  meeting  where  the  strike  was  to  be 
voted.  Nobody  had  opposed  the  strike,  for 
the  cause  was  plainly  a  just  one.  The  men 
wanted  their  pay  to  be  issued  to  them  every 
week,  and  they  were  entitled  to  it.  The  only 
question  in  my  mind  was  one  of  expediency. 
Could  we  hope  to  win  a  strike  at  a  time  like 
that  when  the  mills  were  on  the  verge  of  clos- 
ing because  of  bad  business? 

While  the  speakers  were  presenting  the 
reasons  for  the  strike  I  noticed  that  not  a  man 
examined  or  discussed  the  dangers  in  it.  The 
mind  of  the  meeting  was  made  up.  I  was 
talking  to  the  fellow  who  sat  beside  me,  and 
I  told  him  what  my  father  had  written  me. 

"I  agree,"  he  said.  "A  strike  at  a  time  like 
this  doesn't  seem  to  be  the  right  thing  to  do." 

"If  you  don't  think  it  a  wise  move,"  I  said, 
"why  don't  you  get  up  and  say  so.  For  this 
178 


UNACCUSTOMED  TO  PUBLIC   SPEAKING 

meeting  is  going  to  vote  strike  in  the  next  two 
minutes,  sure  as  fate." 

"I  can't  make  a  speech,"  he  said.  "You  do 
it." 

The  men  were  paid  monthly  checks  and 
had  never  heard  any  complaint  from  their 
landlords  and  grocerymen  who  were  willing 
to  wait  for  their  pay.  The  complaint  had 
been  made  by  a  few  outsiders  who  wanted  to 
see  money  circulate  faster  in  town  and  thus 
boom  things  up  a  bit.  They  had  aroused  the 
strike  spirit  of  the  men  by  speeches  like  this : 

"The  bosses  own  you  body  and  soul.  They 
regard  you  as  slaves.  Your  work  makes  them 
rich  and  yet  they  won't  pay  for  your  work. 
While  they  are  piling  up  profits  you  go 
around  without  a  nickel  in  your  jeans.  At 
the  end  of  the  week  you  want  your  pay.  Why 
don't  they  give  it  to  you?  Because  they  would 
sooner  borrow  money  without  interest  from 
you  than  go  to  the  bank  and  pay  eight  per 
cent,  for  it.  You  men  are  their  bankers  and 
don't  know  it.  You  could  have  your  money 
in  the  bank  instead  of  in  their  pockets — it 
would  be  drawing  interest  for  you  instead  of 
drawing  interest  for  them!  The  interest  on 
the  wages  of  you  men  is  five  hundred  sixty 
179 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

dollars  a  month.  No  wonder  they  hold  your 
pay  for  a  month  and  put  that  five  hundred 
and  sixty  dollars  in  their  pockets.  But  those 
wages  are  yours  as  fast  as  you  earn  them. 
The  interest  on  your  money  belongs  to  you. 
That  five  hundred  and  sixty  dollars  a  month 
belongs  in  your  pockets.  But  it  will  go  into 
the  bosses'  pockets  as  long  as  you  are  willing 
to  be  robbed.  You  have  rights,  but  they 
trample  on  them  when  you  will  not  fight  for 
your  rights.  Are  you  mice  or  men?" 

When  it  was  put  that  way  they  answered 
that  they  were  men.  The  strike  was  "sold" 
to  them  before  the  meeting,  without  their 
having  had  a  chance  to  state  their  side  of  it. 
I  felt  that  this  was  wrong.  There  are  lynch 
verdicts  in  this  world  as  well  as  verdicts  of 
justice.  When  men  have  a  chance  to  make 
up  their  own  minds  their  verdict  is  always 
just.  But  here  a  little  group  who  knew  what 
they  wanted  had  stampeded  the  minds  of  the 
men,  and  a  verdict  won  that  way  is  like  a 
mob  verdict. 

I  decided  to  get  up  and  speak,  although  it 
was  really  too  late.  It  seemed  to  me  like  call- 
ing a  doctor  after  the  patient  is  dead. 

"Men,"  I  said,  "I'm  a  newcomer  here  and  I 
180 


never  made  a  speech  in  my  life.  I  wouldn't 
try  to  now,  only  I've  been  asked  to  by  others — • 
by  somebody  that's  been  here  a  long  time.  He 
thinks  there  ought  to  be  a  little  more  said 
before  we  ballot  It's  a  hot  day  and  I  don't 
want  to  keep  you  here  if  you  don't  want  to 
listen  to  me.  What  I've  got  to  say  probably 
don't  amount  to  much." 

"Go  ahead,"  somebody  said. 

"We've  decided  to  strike,  and  I  don't  know 
how  it  will  turn  out.  I've  been  out  of  work 
for  several  months  and  you  fellows  haven't, 
so  I  can  tell  you  what  it's  like.  The  country 
is  thronging  with  idle  men.  If  we  lose  this 
strike  we  can  roam  all  over  the  country  before 
we  find  another  job.  I  came  all  the  way  here 
from  Alabama,  where  they  drove  a  bunch  of 
iron  workers  into  the  peonage  camps,  and  I 
was  glad  to  get  out  alive.  Conditions  are 
awful  bad  in  this  country  and  I  have  been 
trying  to  study  'em.  Money  is  scarcer  now 
than  it's  ever  been  before.  They  tell  us  that 
the  bosses  are  keeping  our  wages  in  their 
pockets.  That's  a  mistake.  They  haven't  got 
anything  in  their  pockets.  They've  mortgaged 
their  homes  and  pledged  everything  they 
own.  They're  having  a  devil  of  a  time  to 
181 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

rake  up  the  money  every  month  to  meet  the 
pay-roll  when  it's  due.  They  aren't  taking  in 
the  money  as  fast  as  they're  paying  it  out. 
Their  salesmen  are  on  the  road  trying  to  sell 
tin  plate,  but  the  tinners  are  so  hard  up  that 
few  of  them  can  buy. 

"I  believe  we  ought  to  get  our  pay  every 
week,  but  how  can  we  get  it  if  the  boss  hasn't 
got  it?  We've  got  to  look  at  this  thing  in  the 
light  of  facts.  The  facts  are  that  we  have  our 
jobs  and  are  sure  of  our  pay  once  a  month. 
There  are  a  million  men  who  would  like  to 
have  what  we  have.  Those  men  will  swarm 
in  and  take  our  jobs.  You  can't  stop  them. 
A  hungry  man  can't  be  stopped  by  the  cry  of 
*scab.'  You  all  know  that  there  are  so  many 
union  men  now  idle  that  we  have  to  pass 
around  our  jobs  to  keep  the  men  in  this  town 
from  starving.  When  word  goes  out  that  we 
have  struck,  you'll  see  the  workers  swarm  in 
here  like  locusts.  They'll  be  glad  to  take 
their  pay  by  the  month.  What's  the  use  of  a 
strike  that  hasn't  got  a  chance  to  win?  We 
joined  the  union  to  make  our  jobs  secure  and 
to  get  good  pay.  We're  getting  good  pay. 
Our  jobs  are  secure  unless  we  lose  them  in 
this  strike. 

182 


UNACCUSTOMED  TO  PUBLIC   SPEAKING 

"I  don't  believe  we've  looked  at  both  sides 
of  the  case.  I  don't  believe  the  boys  really 
want  this  strike.  The  demand  for  it  orig- 
inated outside  our  ranks.  Who  started  it? 
Wasn't  it  started  by  fellows  who  want  us  to 
get  our  pay  quicker  so  they  can  get  it  quick- 
er? They're  the  ones  that  worked  up  this 
strike.  They  tell  us  that  the  bosses  are  rob- 
bing us  because  they  hold  our  pay  till  the  end 
of  the  month.  They  say  we  ought  to  have  it 
in  the  bank.  They  know  we  wouldn't  put  it 
in  the  bank.  You  know  we  wouldn't  put  it  in 
the  bank.  We  don't  want  to  put  it  in  the 
bank,  and  you  bet  your  boots  they  don't  want 
us  to  put  it  in  the  bank.  They're  liars  when 
they  say  they're  boosting  for  the  banks. 
They're  boosting  for  their  own  pockets. 

"But  we've  really  got  our  money  in  a  bank 
—or  what's  good  as  a  bank.  The  mill  keeps 
our  money  for  us  just  the  way  a  bank  would. 
No  bank  in  town  pays  interest  on  checking 
accounts,  you  know  that.  Then  why  take  our 
money  out  of  the  mill  office  and  put  it  in  a 
bank?  It's  just  as  safe  in  the  mill  office. 
And  you've  got  the  right  to  draw  on  it  if  you 
really  need  money  in  the  middle  of  the 
month.  Only  in  case  of  death  or  accident 
183 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

does  a  man  need  money  in  the  middle  of  the 
month.  And  he  can  go  to  the  pay  window 
and  get  it  when  he  needs  it.  The  doctor 
doesn't  send  his  bill  till  the  end  of  the  month. 
The  landlord  doesn't  collect  the  rent  till  the 
end  of  the  month.  The  grocer  and  butcher 
let  you  run  a  bill  till  the  end  of  the  month. 
Some  of  us  are  really  better  off  getting  our 
pay  at  the  end  of  the  month.  For  it's  all  there 
for  us  and  we  can  pay  our  bills  promptly  and 
hold  up  our  heads  as  men.  If  we  didn't  leave 
our  money  in  the  office  until  the  end  of  the 
month,  we  might  blow  it  in  at  a  bar,  and 
when  the  wife  wanted  money  to  pay  the  rent 
and  food  bill  we  would  have  to  tell  her  we 
were  broke  and  she  would  have  to  hang  her 
head.  When  the  landlord  and  butcher  came 
for  the  money  she  would  have  to  try  to  stand 
them  off.  Do  we  want  to  let  the  rent  go  un- 
paid until  the  landlord  cusses  us  out?  Is  that 
what  we  are  striking  for?  If  the  landlord 
and  butcher  are  willing  to  wait  till  we  draw 
our  pay,  we  ought  to  be  willing  too.  Isn't  it 
better  to  wait  a  month  for  pay  than  to  wait  a 
year?  I'm  right  here  to  tell  you  that  after 
this  strike  we'll  wait  for  our  pay  until  hell 
freezes  over  and  the  devil  goes  skating. 
184 


UNACCUSTOMED  TO  PUBLIC  SPEAKING 

"Let  us  make  no  mistake.  We  are  calling 
this  strike  not  of  our  own  free  will,  but  were 
shoved  into  it  by  a  lot  of  slick  talkers  that  are 
in  business  and  are  not  workers.  They  have 
hoodwinked  us.  They  have  made  fools  of 
us.  A  speaker  asked  are  we  mice  or  men.  I 
ask  them  are  they  rats  or  men.  I  want  these 
rats  to  come  out  of  their  holes  and  stand  upon 
this  floor.  Who  was  the  first  man  that  sug- 
gested this  strike?  I  want  to  see  the  color  of 
his  hair.  Stand  up,  if  he's  in  the  hall.  If  he 
isn't  here,  why  isn't  he?" 

No  one  answered. 

"If  this  strike  was  called  by  outsiders,"  I 
cried,  "why  don't  the  outsiders  do  the  strik- 
ing? Whose  jobs  will  be  lost  in  this  strike — 
our  jobs  or  the  outsiders'  jobs?  If  the  man 
who  started  this  strike  has  a  job  that  won't 
be  lost  in  the  strike,  then  I  claim  that  we 
have  made  a  bad  mistake.  And  if  we're 
making  a  mistake,  men,  what  are  we  going  to 
do  about  it?" 

I  sat  down,  exhausted  by  the  first  attempt 
at  public  pleading  I  had  ever  made.  Every- 
thing grew  dark  about  me,  and  I  knew  that  I 
had  done  my  best  and  that  I  was  through.  I 
was  quite  young,  and  I  went  to  pieces  like 
185 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

an  untrained  runner  who  had  overdone  him- 
self. 

The  men  were  talking  to  one  another,  and 
somebody  moved  that  the  meeting  take  a 
recess  until  after  supper.  It  would  give  time 
to  think  it  over  and  find  out  what  the  men 
really  thought  about  the  strike  proposition. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

LOGIC  WINS  IN  THE  STRETCH 

AT  SEVEN  o'clock  we  met  again  and  several 
men  made  short  talks  opposing  the  strike. 
Each  fellow,  when  he  got  up,  seemed  to  have 
a  lot  of  ideas,  but  when  he  tried  to  express 
them  he  grew  confused,  and  after  stammer- 
ing a  while  he  could  only  put  forth  the  bare 
opinion,  "I  don't  think  we  ought  to  strike." 
This  meeting  was  quite  different  from  the 
other  one.  Here  every  man  was  thinking  for 
himself  but  nobody  could  say  anything.  In 
the  previous  meeting  the  speakers  had  talked 
passionately,  and  the  rest  had  been  swept 
along  with  them  as  a  unit.  In  other  words, 
the  first  session  had  become  group-minded 
instead  of  individual-minded.  It  is  like  the 
difference  between  a  stampede  and  a  delib- 
erative body.  The  second  meeting  was  calmly 
deliberative  and  it  finally  voted  a  recon- 
sideration, and  the  strike  resolution  was  over- 
whelmingly defeated. 

187 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

If  this  were  a  novel,  it  would  be  fine  to 
record  in  this  chapter  that  the  young  orator 
who  at  the  last  moment  turned  the  tide  and 
saved  the  day  became  the  hero  of  the  union 
and  was  unanimously  elected  president. 
That's  the  way  these  things  go  in  fiction. 
And  that  is  exactly  what  happened.  In  due 
time  I  found  myself  at  the  head  of  the  Local, 
and  nearly  every  man  had  voted  for  me.  I 
started  negotiations  for  more  frequent  pay- 
days, and  a  few  months  later  we  were  being 
paid  on  the  first  and  fifteenth  of  the  month. 
Life  is  indeed  dramatic, — at  least  it  has 
seemed  so  to  me.  Some  men  say  that  life 
has  no  meaning;  that  men  are  the  playthings 
of  blind  forces  that  crush  them,  and  there  is 
no  answer  to  the  riddle.  This  is  nonsense.  I 
admit  that  we  are  in  the  grip  of  blind  forces. 
But  we  are  not  blind.  We  can  not  change 
those  forces.  If  we  fight  against  them  they 
will  crush  us.  But  by  going  with  them,  guid- 
ing our  careers  along  their  courses,  they  will 
bear  us  to  the  port  we're  steering  for. 

The  mob  spirit  in  man  is  one  of  those  blind 
forces  that  so  often  lead  to  shipwreck.  The 
mob-mind  differs  from  the  mind  of  reason. 
To  tell  them  apart  is  like  distinguishing 
188 


LOGIC  WINS  IN  THE  STRETCH 

mushrooms  from  toadstools.  They  look  alike, 
but  one  means  health  and  the  other  is  poison. 
Life  has  taught  me  the  difference  between  a 
movement  and  a  mob.  A  movement  is  guided 
by  logic,  law  and  personal  responsibility.  A 
mob  is  guided  by  passion  and  denies  respon- 
sibility. 

I  have  seen  meetings  turned  into  mobs  and 
mobs  dissolved  again  into  meetings.  Swept 
by  passion  we  willed  a  strike.  That  strike 
would  have  been  just,  and,  yet,  it  would  have 
ruined  us.  We  were  like  a  mob  in  which 
every  man  forgets  his  own  responsibility. 
The  mob  mind  would  have  rushed  us  to  our 
own  ruin.  My  speech  called  for  individuals 
to  stand  up.  That  set  each  individual  think- 
ing :  "If  I  stand  up,  that  crazy  guy  will  smash 
me."  Each  man  became  responsible  again. 
The  mob  was  gone,  and  all  we  had  was  indi- 
vidual men,  each  thinking  for  himself.  That 
thinking  then  went  on  and  each  man  reached 
a  verdict  based  on  logic,  sense  and  duty.  The 
meeting  could  no  longer  speak  with  one  voice. 
It  couldn't  talk  at  all.  It  stammered.  The 
action  showed  that  each  mind  stood  apart, 
alone.  And  yet  the  vote  revealed  that  they 
were  all  together. 

189 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

I  have  watched  the  long  struggle  of  union- 
ism in  America  and  I  know  the  law  that  has 
governed  all  its  ups  and  downs.  Wherever 
it  was  still  a  movement  it  has  thrived;  wher- 
ever it  became  a  mob  it  fell.  The  one  Big 
Union  was  a  mob.  No  movement  based  on 
passion  finally  wins;  no  movement  based  on 
reason  finally  fails.  Why  then  say  life  is  a 
riddle  and  man  helpless? 

When  I  became  Secretary  of  Labor,  one  of 
the  first  letters  I  received  was  from  Mrs.  Eli 
Baldwin  whose  coal  oil  I  burned  shamelessly, 
studying  far  into  the  night.  Mrs.  Eli  Baldwin 
wrote  from  Atlanta,  Indiana,  where  she  now 
lives : 

"When  your  roommates  complained  be- 
cause your  light  kept  them  awake,  I  knew 
what  you  were  doing.  I  knew  that  you  were 
studying  their  problems  for  them,  getting 
yourself  an  education  so  you  would  know 
how  to  get  them  better  wages  and  better  work- 
ing conditions." 

This  letter  pleased  me  more  than  I  can  tell. 
This  kind  old  lady,  now  eighty-two,  had  faith 
in  me  and  feels  that  her  faith  was  justified. 
Now,  then,  can  I  believe  that  life  is  meaning- 
less,— that  there  is  no  plan,  and  that  all  man's 
efforts  are  foredoomed  to  failure? 
190 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

I  MEET  THE  INDUSTRIAL  CAPTAINS 

EL  WOOD,  Indiana,  was  a  small  village  that 
had  been  called  Duck  Creek  Post-Office  until 
the  tin  mill  and  other  industries  began  mak- 
ing it  into  a  city.  In  my  capacity  as  president 
of  the  local  union  and  head  of  the  wage  mill 
committee,  I  was  put  in  personal  contact  with 
the  heads  of  these  great  industrial  enter- 
prises. This  was  my  first  introduction  to 
men  of  large  affairs. 

I  approached  them  with  the  inborn  thought 
that  they  must  be  some  sort  of  human  mon- 
sters. The  communist  books  that  Comrade 
Bannerman  had  given  me  taught  me  to  be- 
lieve that  capitalists  had  no  human  feelings 
like  ordinary  mortals.  I  therefore  expected 
to  find  the  mill-boss  as  cunning  as  the  fox 
and  ape  combined.  I  supposed  that  his  word 
would  be  worthless  as  a  pledge  and  would  be 
given  only  for  the  purpose  of  tricking  me. 
His  manners  I  expected  to  be  rude;  he  would 
shout  at  me  and  threaten  me,  hoping  to  take 
191 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

away  my  courage  and  send  me  back  to  my 
fellows  beaten. 

"What  I  found,  of  course,  was  a  self-pos- 
sessed man,  the  model  of  courtesy  and  exact- 
ness. He  differed  from  us  men  in  one 
respect.  His  mind  was  complex  instead  of 
simplex.  That  is,  he  could  think  on  two  sides 
of  a  question  at  the  same  time.  He  had  so 
trained  his  mind  by  much  use  of  it  that  it 
was  as  nimble  as  the  hands  of  a  juggler  who 
can  keep  several  objects  tossing  in  the  air  at 
the  same  time.  We  men  were  clumsy  think- 
ers, and  one  thing  at  a  time  was  all  we  could 
handle  without  fumbling  it 
1  The  great  manufacturer  never  showed  any 
emotion.  He  was  never  angry,  domineering, 
sneering  or  insulting.  He  kept  these  emotions 
under  control  because  they  could  do  him  no 
good,  and  because  they  would  give  pain  to 
others.  We  fellows  never  hesitated  to  show 
how  we  felt.  We  would  jibe  one  another, 
laugh  at  a  fellow  to  his  chagrin,  and  when  we 
were  angry  bawl  each  other  out  unmercifully. 
For  a  fellow  to  smile  when  he  was  angry  and 
not  let  the  other  fellow  know  it,  was  a  trick 
we  had  not  learned.  That  a  bloodthirsty, 
cruel  capitalist  should  be  such  a  graceful  fel- 
low; was  a  shock  to  me.  I  saw  from  the  start 
192 


I  MEET  THE  INDUSTRIAL  CAPTAINS 

that  the  communist  picture  of  a  capitalist  as 
a  bristling,  snorting  hog  was  the  farthest 
thing  from  the  truth.  The  picture  was  drawn 
by  malice  and  not  from  a  desire  to  tell  the 
truth. 

I  learned  that  when  Mr.  Reid  and  his  fel- 
lows gave  their  word  they  never  broke  it.  It 
was  hard  to  get  a  promise  from  them,  but 
once  they  made  a  promise  they  always  ful- 
filled it.  If  they  said  they  would  meet  us  at 
a  certain  hour,  they  were  always  there  on  the 
minute.  They  were  patient,  firm  and  reason- 
able, and  they  always  treated  us  as  their 
equals. 

They  always  gave  us  the  reasons  for  the 
stand  they  took.  At  first  I  doubted  their  sin- 
cerity, but  in  the  end  I  learned  that  the  rea- 
sons they  cited  were  the  true  reasons.  At 
first  they  thought  that  they  would  have  to 
guard  themselves  against  roguery  and 
doubledealing  on  the  part  of  the  tin  workers. 
This  showed  that  they  had  had  unpleasant 
experiences.  For,  men  who  knew  their  busi- 
ness as  well  as  they  did  must  surely  have  had 
some  cause  for  their  suspicion.  Baseless  sus- 
picion is  a  trait  of  ignorant  men,  and  these 
men  were  not  ignorant.  A  burnt  child  dreads 
the  fire. 

193 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

I  decided  to  take  them  as  my  models,  to 
learn  all  their  virtues  and  let  them  know  that 
I  was  as  square  in  my  dealings  with  them  as 
they  were  with  me.  I  studied  their  business 
as  thoroughly  as  I  studied  the  case  of  the 
men.  I  soon  got  from  them  all  the  conces- 
sions we  had  demanded  when  we  called  the 
strike.  It  was  fortunate  for  us  that  the  strike 
was  cancelled,  for  we  kept  our  jobs  and  in 
due  course  got  all  the  things  that  we  were 
going  to  strike  for. 

In  fact,  I  got  so  many  concessions  by  dick- 
ering with  those  bosses  that  I  made  life  a 
burden  for  them  at  times.  I  knew  the  cost  of 
every  different  kind  of  plate  the  mill  put  out, 
and  so  I  could  demand  a  high  rate  of  wages 
and  support  my  demands  with  logic.  My 
midnight  studies  had  not  been  in  vain.  It  all 
came  back  in  cash  to  the  working  man;  and 
yet  it  was  my  own  pals  who  had  rebuked  me 
for  being  too  bookish.  This  did  not  make  me 
sour.  I  loved  the  fellows  just  the  same,  and 
when  they  showed  their  faith  in  me,  it  more 
than  paid  me  back. 

But  I  had  learned  this  general  rule:  The 
average  working  man  thinks  mostly  of  the 
present.  He  leaves  to  students  and  to  capi- 
talists the  safeguarding  of  his  future. 

194 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

SHIRTS  FOR  TIN  ROLLERS 

IN  SUMMER  the  temperature  in  the  tin  mills 
is  very  high.  It  is  as  hot  as  the  Fourth  of 
July  in  Abyssinia.  One  day  a  philosophical 
fellow  was  talking  religion  to  me.  He  said, 
"I  don't  believe  in  hell  as  a  place  where  we 
boil  forever  in  a  lake  of  brimstone.  It  can't 
be  as  hot  as  that.  My  constitution  never 
could  stand  it."  His  constitution  stood  up 
under  the  heat  in  the  tin  mill.  So  it  is  plain 
that  the  tin-mill  temperature  was  somewhat 
less  than  the  temperature  of  the  Pit. 

Outsiders  began  coming  into  the  mills  and 
giving  us  workers  a  chill  by  telling  us  that 
the  heat  was  killing  us.  The  men  used  to 
cool  themselves  down  with  a  glass  of  beer  at 
the  close  of  the  day.  The  social  investigators 
told  us  that  alcohol  taken  into  the  system  at 
such  a  time  would  cause  sunstroke.  If  beer 
was  fatal,  most  of  us  figured  that  we  had 
been  dead  for  years  and  didn't  know  it.  The 
195 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

effect  of  constant  complaints  was  to  demor- 
alize us  and  make  our  work  harder.  I 
thought  at  first  that  these  investigators  were 
our  friends  and  I  gave  them  all  the  help  I 
could.  But  instead  of  helping  us,  they  only 
hurt  us,  and  then  I  soured  on  their  misap- 
plied zeal.  They  were  a  species  new  to  me 
that  seemed  to  have  sprung  up  in  the  hard 
times,  just  as  cooties  spring  up  in  time  of 
war.  And  like  cooties,  they  attached  them- 
selves to  us  closer  than  a  brother  and  yet 
they  were  no  brothers  of  ours.  The  social 
investigators  nibbled  away  at  the  men  and 
kept  them  restless  in  their  hours  of  ease. 
They  sat  at  our  boarding  table  and  com- 
plained of  the  food.  Corned  beef  and  cab- 
bage was  one  of  our  regular  dishes.  Mr.  In- 
vestigator turned  up  his  nose  and  said:  "I 
never  touch  corned  beef.  If  you  knew  as 
much  about  it  as  I  do,  you  would  insist  on 
steaks  or  roast  beef  instead.  You  know  what 
corned  beef  is,  don't  you?" 

The  men  got  mad  and  one  fellow  said: 
"Yes;  it  is  dead  cow.  All  meat  is  dead 
animals.  Now  give  us  a  rest." 

"Yes,  it's  all  dead,  but  some  of  it  is  a  whole 
lot  deader  than  you  imagine.  I've  been  in- 
196 


SHIRTS  FOR  TIN  ROLLERS 

vestigating  the  packing  business,  and  I'll  tell 
you  all  about  corned  beef  and  wienies."  He 
then  went  on  with  a  lot  of  sickening  details 
and  when  he  got  through  he  found  that  the 
younger  men  had  not  eaten  any  dinner.  The 
older  men  paid  no  attention  to  him  and 
worked  right  ahead  to  the  pie  and  toothpick 
stage,  but  the  younger  fellows  had  been 
euchered  out  of  dinner  and  went  back  to  work 
with  wabbly  steps  and  empty  stomachs. 

This  convinced  me  that  the  investigator 
was  a  false  alarm.  If  corned  beef  was  poison, 
as  he  said,  there  wouldn't  be  a  working  man 
alive  in  America.  But  millions  have  eaten 
corned  beef  all  their  lives  and  have  thrived 
on  it.  Things  are  never  one  tenth  so  bad  as 
the  agitators  say.  They  merely  take  the 
heart  out  of  men  and  send  them  back  to 
work  weakened  and  unhappy. 

This  fellow  had  a  favorite  joke  which  he 
sprang  every  meal.  After  sniffing  at  the' 
soup  and  meat  and  cabbage  he  would  ex- 
claim :  "Hebrews,  13-8."  We  thought  it  was 
some  jibe  about  the  fat  pork,  and  after  he 
had  sprung  it  every  day  for  a  week  we 
learned  that  he  was  hitting  at  the  monotony 
of  the  diet.  The  verse  in  the  Bible  reads : 
197 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

"Jesus  Christ  the  same  yesterday,  and 
to-day,  and  forever." 

The  fellow  came  into  the  mills  and  sym- 
pathized with  us  because  we  worked  with  our 
shirts  off.  To  withstand  the  heat  we  stripped 
to  the  waist.  We  didn't  want  to  wear  a  shirt. 
It  would  have  clung  to  our  flesh  and  ham- 
pered our  moving  muscles.  We  were  freer 
and  cooler  without  any  cloth  to  smother  us. 
It  was  a  privilege  to  go  shirtless.  Adam, 
enjoyed  that  blessing  in  the  Garden  of  Eden. 
And  when  he  sinned  they  punished  him  by 
putting  a  shirt,  collar  and  necktie  on  him. 
And  yet  this  theorist  in  the  mills  demanded 
working  conditions  that  would  let  us  wear 
shirts.  Why?  Who  was  asking  for  shirts? 
Only  he,  and  he  had  a  shirt.  In  their  own 
words,  the  fellows  would  have  enjoyed  mak- 
ing him  eat  it. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

AN  UPLIFTER  RULED  BY  ENVY 

^ 

THE  uplifter  saw  the  men  between  heats 
drinking  beer  out  of  tin  pails. 

"Why  do  those  big  fine  fellows  drink  beer," 
he  asked  me,  "when  they  have  plenty  of 
water?" 

I  asked  him:    "Why  don't  you  drink  beer?" 

"It  makes  me  bilious,"  he  replied.  "If  I 
drink  one  glass  of  beer  every  day  for  a  week 
it  upsets  me  and  I  get  weak  and  dizzy." 

"Do  you  think  that  one  drink  of  beer  a  day 
will  upset  those  fellows  and  make  them 
dizzy?" 

"Evidently  not." 

"Then  when  you  oppose  beer  you  are  doing 
it  to  keep  yourself  from  getting  sick,  aren't 
you?  Do  you  really  care  a  darn  whether 
those  fellows  get  sick  at  the  stomach  or  not?" 

"Certainly,  I " 

"You  don't  want  them  to  get  sick  at  the 
stomach?" 

"No." 

199 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

"Then,  why  did  you  give  that  lecture  on 
corned  beef  and  make  those  strong  fellows 
all  sick  at  the  stomach  while  you  enjoyed  your 
own  dinner?" 

"I  didn't  know  it  would  disturb  them  so. 
Besides  I  wanted  to  keep  them  from  getting 
sick  later." 

"Well,  they  prefer  to  have  their  health  now, 
and  wait  for  their  sickness  until  later  on.  You 
are  doing  no  man  a  favor  by  making  him 
sick  when  he  is  feeling  well.  If  God  is  willing 
for  them  to  be  well,  and  they  want  to  be  well, 
and  the  only  thing  that  keeps  them  from  being 
well  is  you,  aren't  you  afraid  that  they  will 
pile  on  to  you  and  knock  the  daylights  out  of 
you?" 

"I  am  really  working  for  their  good." 

"Then  you  want  their  stomachs  to  have 
what  agrees  with  them?" 

"Certainly." 

"Well,  I'll  tell  you  something,  then.  Water 
doesn't  always  agree  with  the  stomach  as  well 
as  beer  does.  You  never  worked  at  terrific 
muscular  exertion  handling  white-hot  iron 
in  a  mill  like  this.  You  haven't  got  the  mus- 
cles to  do  it,  and  I  doubt  if  you've  got  the 
heart  You  can  not  know  the  condition  a 
200 


AN  UPLIFTER  RULED  BY  ENVY 

man  is  in  when  he  hits  his  hardest  lick  here. 
But  they  know,  and  I  know.  Some  of  the 
men  feel  they  can't  drink  water  at  that  time. 
My  pal  tells  me  that  his  stomach  rejects  it; 
his  throat  seems  to  collapse  as  he  gulps  it. 
But  beer  he  can  drink  and  it  eases  him.  The 
alcohol  in  beer  is  a  blessing  at  that  time.  It 
soothes  his  laboring  stomach  until  the  water 
can  get  into  his  system  and  quench  the  man's 
thirst.  Iron  workers  in  the  Old  World  have 
used  malt  beverages  for  generations.  Why 
take  away  the  other  man's  pleasure  if  it 
doesn't  injure  you?  If  it  was  deadly  we 
would  have  been  weakened  in  the  course  of 
generations.  But  look  at  the  worker's  body. 
It  is  four  times  as  strong  as  yours."  I  saw 
an  envious  look  in  his  eye. 

"Of  course  I  inherited  my  muscular  build," 
I  apologized,  "and  so  I  try  to  make  the  most 
of  it  in  boasting  to  you  fellows  who  haven't 
any  muscle.  But  really  I  envy  you.  You  have 
education  and  brain  power.  That's  what  I 
lack  and  that's  what  I  want  above  all  other 
things.  I  try  to  study  at  night  and  educate 
myself.  But  I  haven't  got  any  chance  against 
you  fellows  who  are  born  intellectual  and 
have  college  training  on  top  of  it.  So  if  I 
201 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

have  talked  sharp  to  you,  my  cussedness  is 
really  due  to  envy.  I  really  want  to  be  in 
your  shoes,  and  I  haven't  got  the  brains  for 
the  job." 

This  worked. 

'There  is  nothing  about  me  for  a  fellow 
like  you  to  envy,"  he  said  condescendingly. 
"I'm  no  better  off  than  you  are.  In  fact,  I 
envy  you  fellows.  You  are  never  sick;  you 
can  eat  and  digest  anything.  I  really  envy 
you.  You  are  built  like  a  young  Hercules 
and  are  never  ashamed  when  you  strip. 
When  I  put  on  a  bathing  suit  I  am  embar- 
rassed until  I  get  out  of  sight  in  the  water, 
because  I'm  all  skin  and  bones.  My  arms  and 
legs  are  the  size  of  broomsticks." 

"Oh,  well,"  I  said,  "you're  just  as  well  off 
without  the  Hercules  shape.  You  are  always 
healthy." 

"Healthy?  What  I  call  health,  you  fellows 
would  regard  as  the  last  stages  of  decrepitude. 
A  little  beer  and  tobacco  knocks  me  over.  If 
I  drank  coffee  and  ate  pie  the  way  you  do, 
I'd  have  to  take  morphine  to  get  a  night's 
sleep.  You  fellows  need  never  envy  us  intel- 
lectuals. You  can  drink  and  smoke  and  eat 
anything,  and  all  the  poisons  you  take  in  are 
202 


AN  UPLIFTER  RULED  BY  ENVY 

sweated  out  of  your  pores  in  this  terrific 
labor,  so  that  every  night  you  come  out  as 
clean  and  lusty  as  a  new-born  child.  I'd 
swap  all  my  education  in  a  minute  for  the 
mighty  body  and  the  healthy  and  lusty  living 
that  you  enjoy.  If  you  knew  how  much  I 
envy  you,  you  would  never  think  of  envying 
me." 

He  had  blurted  out  the  truth.  It  wasn't 
love  of  comrades  that  gave  a  motive  to  his 
life.  It  was  envy  that  turned  him  inside  out. 
Envy  was  the  whole  story,  and  he  admitted 
it 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

GROWLING  FOR  THE  BOSSES'  BLOOD 

I  THOUGHT  I  made  a  number  of  enemies 
among  the  men  while  I  was  head  of  the  mill 
committee.  When  a  man  dissipated  and  af- 
terward came  back  to  work,  trembling  and 
weak,  the  boss  would  refuse  to  let  him  take 
up  his  tools,  but  would  lay  the  man  off  for  a 
few  days.  The  man  usually  thought  this  a 
useless  and  cruel  punishment;  and  to  lose  a 
few  days'  wages  would  make  him  all  the 
poorer. 

The  man  thus  laid  off  would  come  to  me 
and  ask  that  I  get  him  reinstated. 

"Tell  'em  you'll  call  a  strike,"  the  man 
would  say.  "Tell  'em  that  if  they  don't  let 
me  work,  nobody  will  work." 

I  always  refused  to  take  such  complaints 
to  the  office.  I  never  approached  the  boss 
with  a  demand  that  I  did  not  think  was  right. 
Some  of  the  men  thought  we  ought  to  be  vin- 
dictive and  take  every  opportunity  to  put  a 
204 


GROWLING  FOR  THE  BOSSES'  BLOOD 

crimp  in  the  business  for  the  owners,  I  en- 
vied the  owners  (we've  all  got  a  touch  of  that 
in  our  system),  because  they  were  rich  and 
were  making  profits.  I  knew  what  their 
profits  averaged.  By  calling  fussy  little 
strikes  often  enough  I  could  have  kept  the 
profits  close  to  the  zero  mark.  Thus  the  men 
would  be  making  wages  out  of  the  business 
and  the  owners  would  be  making  nothing. 
But  I  declined  to  let  my  actions  be  governed 
by  envy.  The  Ten  Commandments  forbid 
covetousness.  The  Golden  Rule  also  forbade 
my  practising  sabbotage.  And  I  have  never 
tried  to  find  a  better  guide  than  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments and  the  Golden  Rule.  The  test  of 
my  misconduct  would  have  come  when,  hav- 
ing cleverly  destroyed  their  profits,  I  found 
them  quitting  in  discouragement,  closing  up 
the  business  and  throwing  us  all  out  of  our 
jobs  for  keeps. 

I  tried  to  point  out  these  things  to  the  men. 
Some  of  them  felt  as  I  did  about  it.  Others 
couldn't  see  it.  So  I  learned  darn  early  in 
life  that  you  can't  reform  'em  all. 

I  used  to  say  to  the  complaining  man : 
"Look  here,  Bill;  you're  in  no  shape  to 
work.    Go  home  and  lie  down  for  a  couple  of 
205 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

days.  You  wouldn't  last  here  two  hours  in 
your  present  shaky  condition.  You'd  pinch 
the  rolls  with  your  tongs  and  probably  get 
your  neck  broke.  That's  why  they  won't  let 
you  work.  You  can't  work.  So  back  to  your 
bed,  Bill,  we  will  not  call  them  out  to-day." 

Bill  usually  went  away  cursing  me  as  the 
friend  of  the  "plutes"  and  the  enemy  of  labor. 
"I'll  get  you  yet,"  he'd  say,  "you  black-headed 
buzzard." 

And  so  while  I  was  making  enemies  among 
many  of  the  men  who  thought  I  wasn't  stand- 
ing up  for  their  rights,  I  was  making  myself 
even  more  unpopular  with  the  owners  by 
sticking  up  too  firmly  for  the  rights  of  the 
men.  They  told  me  they  believed  I  knew  as 
much  about  the  tin  plate  business  as  any  man 
in  the  trade.  This  knowledge  would  enable 
me  to  do  better  in  the  distributing  end  of  the 
business,  while  as  a  worker  I  could  only  make 
the  union  wages  that  all  the  fellows  were  get- 
ting. This  gave  me  an  idea  that  has  since 
become  the  dominating  purpose  of  my  life. 
Handicraft  is  the  basis  of  the  best  schooling. 
By  working  with  my  hands  as  well  as  with 
my  head  I  learned  the  actual  cost  of  produc- 
tion of  every  kind  of  plate  they  put  out.  This 
206 


GROWLING  FOR  THE  BOSSES'  BLOOD 

was  something  that  I  could  not  have  learned 
from  books.  Without  such  knowledge  the 
business  would  have  to  be  run  partly  on 
guesswork.  With  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
the  production  end  of  the  business  I  became 
a  valuable  man.  The  way  was  open  for  me 
to  get  out  of  the  labor  field  and  into  the  field 


of  management. 


But  here  is  where  my  natural  feeling  of 
fraternity  stepped  in.  I  liked  to  be  among  the 
men.  I  felt  at  home  there.  I  was  only  twen- 
ty-two, and  salesmanship  was  a  field  I  had 
never  tried,  except  for  a  season  when  I  sold 
Mark  Twain's  book,  Following  the  Equator. 
There  were  plenty  of  men  who  had  the  knack 
of  selling.  My  natural  gift,  if  I  had  any,  was 
to  smooth  the  path  for  working  men  and 
help  them  solve  their  problems.  I  had 
learned  that  labor  was  the  first  step  on  the 
road  to  knowledge.  It  was  the  foundation  of 
all  true  knowledge.  I  wanted  to  help  the  fel- 
lows take  the  next  step.  That  step  would  be 
to  learn  how  labor  can  enrich  itself  and  do 
away  with  strikes  and  unemployment.  That 
is  a  question  that  still  fascinates  me.  I  did 
not  care  to  dodge  it  and  become  a  manufac- 
turer. I  am  the  kind  of  fellow  who,  when  he 
207 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

takes  hold  of  a  question,  never  lets  go.  The 
picture  of  Comrade  Bannerman  shaking  his 
fist  at  the  trainload  of  "plutes"  lingered  with 
me.  I  still  heard  the  voice  of  the  knock-kneed 
reformer  who  envied  my  husky  limbs.  The 
cry  for  bloody  revolution  was  already  in  the 
air.  When  would  the  mob  be  started  and 
what  would  it  do?  When  Comrade  Banner- 
man had  robbed  the  rich  and  piled  their 
corpses  in  a  Caesar's  column,  would  not  the 
knock-kneed  uplifter  break  my  legs  in  mak- 
ing all  men  equal?  These  men  were  moved 
by  envy  and  they  lusted  for  blood.  I  faced 
the  problem  with  a  thirst  for  accurate  knowl- 
edge, and  my  passion  was  not  for  bloodshed 
but  for  brotherhood. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 

FREE  AND  UNLIMITED  COINAGE 

IT  WAS  during  the  panic  in  1894  that  the 
strike  vote  was  defeated.  We  worked  on 
until  the  first  of  July,  1896,  when  our  agree- 
ment expired.  By  that  time  the  tin  mill  was 
on  its  feet.  The  town  of  Elwood  had  grown 
from  a  country  cross-roads  to  a  city  of  the 
first  class.  As  president  of  the  union,  I  had 
steadily  gained  concessions  for  the  workers. 
We  were  getting  paid  every  two  weeks.  It  is 
not  practical  to  pay  oftener  in  the  tin  trade. 
A  man's  work  has  to  be  measured  and 
weighed,  and  the  plate  he  rolls  on  Saturday 
can  not  be  cut  and  measured  in  time  for  him 
to  get  his  pay  for  it  that  week.  For  the  pay 
envelope  is  handed  to  him  Saturday  noon, 
and  his  Saturday's  rolling  will  not  go  through 
the  cutter  until  Monday.  He  can  not  be  paid 
for  it  until  it  is  in  shape  to  be  measured.  So 
we  were  satisfied  to  be  paid  twice  a  month. 

But  the  mill  was  now  making  big  profits 
209 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

and  we  demanded  a  raise  in  pay.  The  mill 
owners  countered  by  refusing  to  "recognize" 
the  union.  They  would  deal  with  the  men 
only  as  individuals.  A  strike  was  called,  and 
the  union  won.  We  recovered  our  raise 
in  pay  and  signed  a  new  contract.  The 
strike  was  off  in  September  after  two  long 
months  of  idleness,  and  within  a  few  days 
after  the  dust  had  settled  we  smelt  the  fire- 
works of  political  oratory.  I  am  telling  it 
now  as  it  appeared  to  me  then,  and  of  course 
I  beg  the  indulgence  of  those  concerned. 

Bryan,  the  bearcat  of  the  Nebraska  ranches, 
had  roared  with  his  ears  back,  and  the  land 
was  in  a  tumult.  "Coin's  Financial  School" 
had  already  taught  the  people  that  the  "gold- 
bugs"  owned  the  country  and  that  the  people 
could  save  themselves  from  eternal  serfdom 
only  by  changing  the  color  of  their  money. 
Bryan  told  the  westerners  that  the  East  was 
the  "enemy's  country"  and  that  the  gold 
standard  was  a  game  by  which  the  East  was 
robbing  the  West,  and  the  only  way  the 
people  of  the  West  could  save  themselves  was 
to  move  East  and  clip  bonds  or  else  change 
the  color  of  the  money! 

This  is  the  way  it  looked  to  me  as  a  working 
210 


FREE  AND  UNLIMITED  COINAGE 

man,  and  I  hope  my  good  friend  Bryan  will 
pardon  me  for  writing  of  his  "great  para- 
mount issue"  in  a  joking  way.  For  after  all  it 
was  a  joke,  a  harmless  joke — because  we 
didn't  adopt  it.  I  got  excited  by  the  threat- 
ened "remedy"  and  went  into  politics.  While 
the  tin  trade  was  on  strike,  crazy  propagan- 
dists from  everywhere  poured  into  El  wood 
and  began  teaching  the  men  bi-metalism, 
communism,  bolshevism  and  anarchy.  A 
communist  propagandist  is  like  a  disease 
germ;  he  doesn't  belong  in  healthy  bodies. 
If  he  gets  in  he  can't  increase  and  is  soon 
thrown  out  again.  But  let  a  strike  weaken 
the  body  of  workers,  and  the  germs  swarm  in 
and  start  their  scarlet  fever. 

As  soon  as  the  strike  was  won,  I  threw  my- 
self into  the  task  of  combatting  the  rising  tide 
of  class  hatred  led  by  Bryan,  representing 
agrarians  in  a  fight  against  bankers  and  in- 
dustrialists. I  was  chairman  of  the  mill 
workers'  Sound  Money  Club.  Bryan  was 
running  for  president  on  a  platform  declaring 
that  the  laboring  man  should  "not  be  cruci- 
fied upon  a  cross  of  gold."  No  laboring  man 
wanted  to  be.  I  was  on  the  same  side  of  the 
fence  with  Bryan  when  it  came  to  the  cruci- 
211 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

fixion  question,  but  on  the  opposite  side  of 
the  fence  regarding  the  gold  question.  Of 
course  I  knew  little  about  finance,  and  could 
not  answer  the  Nebraskan.  But  had  he  ad- 
vocated the  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of 
pig-iron  I  could  have  talked  him  into  a  gasp- 
ing hysteria.  For,  we  mill  fellows  figured 
that  this  was  exactly  what  Bryan's  money 
theory  amounted  to.  His  farmer  friends  had 
borrowed  gold  money  from  the  bankers, 
spent  it  in  drought  years  plowing  land  that 
produced  nothing,  and  then  found  themselves 
unable  to  pay  it  back.  They  wanted  to  call 
silver  and  paper  cash  and  pay  the  debt  with 
this  new  kind  of  money.  He  wanted  a  money 
system  by  which  a  farmer  could  borrow 
money  to  put  in  his  crop,  then  having  failed 
to  raise  a  crop  (I  have  mentioned  the  great 
drought  years)  could  yet  pay  back  the  money. 
But  no  farming  nation  can  suffer  great  crop 
losses  without  being  set  back  financially  and 
starved  to  where  it  hurts.  You've  got  to  fig- 
ure God's  laws  into  your  human  calculations. 
"Bryan  might  as  well  try  to  dodge  the  hun- 
gry days  by  advocating  the  free  and  unlimited 
coinage  of  tomato  cans,"  is  the  way  one  of 
the  fellows  put  it;  "then  every  man  could 
borrow  a  dollar  and  buy  a  can  of  tomatoes. 
212 


FREE  AND  UNLIMITED  COINAGE 

After  eating  the  tomatoes  he  could  coin  the 
can  into  a  dollar  and  buy  another  can  of 
tomatoes.  And  so  on  until  he  got  too  old  to 
eat,  and  then  he  could  use  the  last  dollar 
from  the  tin  can  in  paying  back  the  banker." 
Schemes  like  that  are  all  right  for  orators  and 
agitators  who  make  their  living  with  words. 
But  farmers  and  iron  workers  know  what 
it  is  that  turns  clods  into  corn  and  what  makes 
the  iron  wheels  that  bear  it  to  market.  It 
is  muscle  applied  with  the  favor  of  God. 

Without  labor,  no  crops.  Without  rain,  no 
crops.  It  was  world-wide  crop  failures  that 
finally  brought  the  lean  years  of  the  nineties. 
The  return  of  big  crops  was  already  reviving 
the  sick  world.  It  rejected  the  radicals' 
"remedy"  and  next  year  it  was  well.  Had  we 
taken  that  wrong  medicine  in  the  dark  it 
would  have  killed  us.  Thirty  years  later  Rus- 
sia let  them  shoot  that  medicine  into  her  arm 
and  it  paralyzed  her.  The  rain  falls  upon 
her  fields  and  the  soil  is  rich,  but  it  brings 
forth  no  harvest  and  the  people  starve. 

Russia  has  had  famines  before,  but  they 
were  acts  of  God.  The  rain  failed  and  there 
was  no  harvest.  Their  present  famine  is  an 
act  of  man.  Labor  ceased.  And  the  ensuing 
hunger  was  man's  own  fault.  Nations  that 
213 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

think  labor  is  a  curse,  and  adopt  schemes  to 
avoid  labor,  must  perish  for  their  folly. 

In  1896  we  came  within  an  inch  of  adopting 
financial  bolshevism.  This  taught  me  that  a 
people  are  poorly  schooled  who  can  not  tell 
the  good  from  the  bad.  The  wise  heads  knew 
what  was  good  for  the  country.  Hard  work 
and  good  crops  would  cure  our  ills.  But  mil- 
lions voted  for  a  poison  that  would  have 
destroyed  us.  From  that  time  on  I  dreamed 
of  a  new  kind  of  school,  not  the  kind  we  had 
that  turned  out  men  to  grope  blindly  between 
good  and  folly.  But  a  school  based  on  the 
fundamental  facts  of  life  and  labor,  the  need 
of  food  and  housing,  and  the  sweating  skill 
that  brings  man  most  of  his  blessings.  A 
school  from  which  no  man  could  come  out 
ignorant.  That  school  should  teach  the  eter- 
nal facts,  and  he  that  denied  the  facts  wrould 
then  be  known  for  a  fool  or  a  rogue — and  not 
be  thought  a  Messiah. 

I  love  sentiment,  and  I  believe  in  God.  And 
I  believe  that  facts  are  God's  glorious  handi- 
work. "Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the 
truth  will  set  you  free."  The  man  who  shuns 
realities  because  they  belittle  him  is  on  the 
wrong  road;  he  is  hopelessly  lost  from  the 
beginning. 

214 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 

THE  EDITOR  GETS  MY  GOAT 

MADISON  COUNTY,  Indiana,  was  a  Demo- 
cratic stronghold  outside  the  mill  towns, 
and  a  few  farming  townships.  Free  silver 
orators  were  telling  the  farmers  that  under  a 
gold  standard  no  factory  could  run.  The 
farmers  could  see  the  smoke  of  the  tin  mills 
which  had  built  a  great  city  just  beyond 
their  corn-fields.  The  silver  men  explained 
that  smoke  as  "a  dummy  factory  set  up  by 
Mark  Hanna  with  Wall  Street  money  to  make 
a  smoke  and  fool  the  people  into  thinking 
that  it  was  a  real  factory  and  that  industry 
was  reviving  under  a  Republican  tariff."  The 
orators  said  the  best  proof  that  it  was  a  sham 
mill  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  plutocrats  claimed 
it  was  a  tin  mill,  while  "everybody  knows  it 
is  impossible  to  manufacture  tin  plate  in 
America." 

My  method  of  getting  votes  for  the  tariff 
was  to  take  young  Democrats  from  the  mill 
and  transport  them  to  Democratic  rallies  in 
215 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

the  far  corner  of  the  county  where  they 
heard  their  Democratic  orators  saying  that 
the  mill  was  a  sham  put  up  to  fool  voters  and 
that  it  was  not  manufacturing  any  tin.  When 
the  young  Democrats  heard  such  rot  they 
turned  against  their  party.  They  were  farm 
boys  who  had  been  brought  up  in  that  county 
and  had  quit  the  farm  and  gone  into  the  tin 
mill  because  they  could  earn  twice  as  much 
making  tin  as  they  could  farming.  A  worker  at 
work  is  hard-headed  enough  to  know  that 
when  an  orator  tells  him  he  is  not  working  and 
not  earning  any  money,  the  orator  is  an  ass. 
These  lies  about  fake  factories  hurt  the  Demo- 
crats by  turning  all  the  mill  Democrats  into 
Republicans.  This  is  the  only  method  I  have 
ever  used  in  campaigning.  The  Republicans 
carried  the  town.  When,  two  years  later,  I 
ran  for  city  clerk,  they  passed  around  the 
rumor  that  I  was  a  wild  Welshman  from  a 
land  where  the  tribes  lived  in  caves  and  wore 
leather  skirts  and  wooden  shoes,  and  that  I 
had  had  my  first  introduction  to  a  pants- 
wearing  people  when  I  came  to  America. 
They  said  that  I  had  not  yet  learned  to  speak 
English,  could  not  spell  my  own  name,  and 
was  unable  to  count  above  ten. 
216 


THE  EDITOR  GETS  MY  GOAT 

These  charges  printed  in  the  opposition 
paper  offered  me  my  only  chance  for  election. 
I  went  to  all  my  meetings  with  a  big  slate. 
I  asked  my  audience  to  call  out  numbers.  I 
wrote  down  the  figures  and  then  did  sums  in 
arithmetic  to  prove  that  I  could  count.  I 
would  ask  if  there  was  a  school-teacher  in 
the  audience  (there  was  always  one  there). 
He  would  rise,  and  I  would  ask  him  to  verify 
my  calculations.  I  would  also  have  him  ask 
me  to  spell  words.  He  would  give  me  such 
words  as  "combustion,"  "garbage  disposal," 
"bonded  indebtedness"  and  so  on.  I  would 
spell  the  words  and  write  them  on  the  slate. 
He  would  then  ask  me  questions  in  history, 
geography  and  political  economy.  Then  the 
school-teacher  would  turn  to  the  crowd  and 
say: 

"Friends,  I  came  to  this  meeting  because  I 
had  read  that  Mr.  Davis  is  an  ignorant  for- 
eigner unfitted  for  the  duties  of  city  clerk. 
I  find  to  my  surprise  that  he  is  well  informed. 
I  am  glad  we  came  here  and  investigated,  for 
we  can  all  rest  assured  that  if  he  is  elected 
to  the  office,  he  is  entirely  capable  of  filling 
it." 

I  handled  the  money  and  kept  the  books 
217 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

for  the  union,  and  this  work  in  addition  to 
my  campaign  efforts  wore  me  down  at  last. 
Two  nights  before  the  election  I  decided  that 
I  had  small  chance  of  winning.  I  was  on  the 
Republican  ticket,  and  the  Republicans  had 
been  in  office  four  years  and  their  adminis- 
tration had  proved  unfortunate.  There  had 
been  rich  pickings  for  contractors  in  that  new 
and  overgrown  city,  and  the  people  blamed 
the  Republicans  and  were  determined  on  a 
change. 

I  was  passing  the  office  of  the  opposition 
editor  late  at  night  after  canvassing  for  votes 
all  day.  I  thought  of  the  nasty  slurs  he  had 
written  about  me  and  my  whole  ancestry.  I 
had  fought  hard  to  educate  myself  and  had 
been  helpful  to  others.  My  self-respect 
revolted  under  this  editor's  malicious  goad- 
ing. I  happened  to  see  him  in  his  front 
office,  and  on  a  sudden  impulse,  I  went  in, 
took  hold  of  his  collar,  and  gave  him  a  good 
licking. 

The  next  day  he  bawled  me  out  worse  than 
ever.  He  said  I  was  not  only  a  wild  Welsh- 
man and  a  blockhead,  but  what  is  more 
deadly  still,  I  was  a  gorilla  and  an  assassin. 

And  the  next  day  I  was  elected. 
218 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 

PUTTING  JAZZ  INTO  THE  CAMPAIGN 

I  WILL  go  back  and  relate  more  details  of 
my  race  for  office.  Having  won  the  nomina- 
tion, I  thrilled  with  pleasure  and  excitement, 
but  I  was  at  a  loss  as  to  how  to  begin  my 
campaign  for  election.  Should  I  hope  for 
support  among  the  white-collar  classes  in 
the  "swell"  end  of  town,  among  the  mer- 
chants and  mill  owners  or  only  in  the  quarter 
where  the  workers  lived? 

The  first  act  of  a  candidate  is  to  have  cards 
printed  and  pass  them  out  to  every  one  he 
meets.  My  cards  bore  my  name  and  my 
slogan:  "Play  the  game  square."  I  argued 
that  the  workers  should  take  part  in  the  city 
government.  I  quit  the  tin  mill  and  went 
around  making  speeches.  And  as  there  were 
no  movies,  and  the  men  had  nothing  to  do 
evenings  but  listen  to  speeches,  it  was  no 
trouble  at  all  to  find  an  audience.  I  learned 
that  a  politician  or  an  orator  has  the  same 
219 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

appetite  for  audiences  that  a  drunkard  has 
for  gin.  When  is  an  orator  not  an  orator? 
When  he  hasn't  got  an  audience.  I  found  that 
when  a  horse  fell  down  on  the  street  and  a 
crowd  gathered  to  pick  it  up,  somebody  began 
"addressing  the  gathering  on  the  issues  of  the 
day." 

Now  I  know  why  the  cranks  from  every- 
where swarm  into  any  region  where  a  strike 
is  on.  They  are  seeking  audiences.  They 
have  no  love  for  humanity  except  that  por- 
tion of  humanity  which  is  forced  to  be  an 
audience  for  their  itching  tongues.  I  have 
known  rich  Jawbone  Janes  to  travel  half 
across  the  continent  to  harangue  a  poor  bunch 
of  striking  hunyaks.  These  daughters  of 
luxury  wanted  one  luxury  that  money  could 
not  buy.  The  luxury  of  chinning  their  drivel 
to  an  audience.  You  can't  buy  audiences  as 
you  buy  orchids  and  furs.  Accidents  make 
audiences.  When  a  horse  falls  down  and  a 
crowd  gathers,  he'll  be  up  again  and  the 
crowd  gone  before  a  girl  from  Riverside 
Drive  can  come  a  hundred  miles  in  a  Pull- 
man. But  when  the  job  falls  down,  the  strike 
crowd  sticks  together  for  days.  This  gives 
the  crack-brained  lady  opportunity  to  catch 
220 


PUTTING  JAZZ  INTO  THE  CAMPAIGN 

the  Transcontinental  limited  and  get  there  in 
time  to  pound  their  ears  with  her  oratory. 
She  prefers  a  foreign  crowd  that  can  not  un- 
derstand English;  they  are  slower  to  balk  on 
her.  Not  understanding  what  she  says,  it 
fails  to  irritate  them  greatly.  I  know  of  one 
radical  rich  girl  who  boasts  she  has  spread 
the  glad  tidings  to  audiences  of  thousands 
representing  every  foreign  language  in 
America.  She  still  hopes  some  time  to  catch 
an  audience  that  understands  her  own 
language.  That  would  be  a  little  better  fun, 
she  thinks;  but  still  the  joy  of  talking  is  the 
main  thing,  so  it  matters  little  whether  your 
audience  understands.  She  wants  her  au- 
diences to  be  alive,  that's  all;  she  doesn't  care 
much  what  they're  alive  with. 

When  the  worker  comes  to  understand  that 
these  "leaders"  from  high  society  care  noth- 
ing for  him  but  only  want  a  prominence  for 
themselves  and  have  no  natural  talents  with 
which  to  earn  that  prominence,  then  the 
worker  will  get  rid  of  that  tribe  forever.  Bill 
Haywood  lacked  the  qualities  that  made  Sam 
Gompers  a  labor  leader.  Bill  decided  to  be  a 
leader  without  qualifying  for  it,  and  history 
tells  the  rest. 

221 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

I  circulated  among  the  audiences  that  were 
listening  to  other  candidates  and  waited  for 
the  men  to  express  their  opinions.  I  heard 
one  stalwart  old  fellow  declare  he  was  going 
to  vote  for  Jazz.  "Jazz  is  the  fellow  we  want 
for  City  Clerk,"  I  heard  him  tell  his  com- 
rades. I  had  never  heard  of  Jazz  in  those 
days:  Jazz  was  decidedly  a  dark  horse.  But 
the  man  was  strong  for  him  and  wanted  his 
friends  to  vote  the  same  way. 

There  is  a  trick  that  was  often  used  in 
small-town  elections.  When  the  "reform  ele- 
ment" made  a  fight  on  the  "old  gang"  it  was 
customary  for  the  gang  to  lie  down  and  place 
the  name  of  the  new  man  on  the  ticket.  The 
reformer  thought  the  gang  beaten  and  that 
his  own  election  was  sure,  so  he  didn't  make 
a  hard  campaign.  But  the  gang  quietly  passed 
around  word  to  scratch  the  name  of  the 
reformer  and  to  write  in  the  name  of  a  gang 
candidate  in  the  secrecy  of  the  polling  booth. 

Was  this  trick  being  played  on  me?  Were 
they  now  passing  around  the  word  to  scratch 
me  and  write  in  the  name  of  their  friend, 
Jazz,  who  had  not  come  out  as  a  candidate 
before?  I  edged  in  closer  to  the  man  who 
was  boosting  Mr.  Jazz  for  my  job,  and  after 
222 


PUTTING  JAZZ  INTO  THE  CAMPAIGN 

listening  for  a  while  I  learned  that  "Jazz 
Davis"  was  the  man  he  was  electioneering  for. 
He  caught  sight  of  my  face  and  said :  "There 
he  is  now." 

"My  name  isn't  Jazz,"  I  said.  I  handed 
him  my  card.  It  read: 

JAS.  J.  DAVIS 

"What  is  it  then?"  he  asked. 

I  saw  that  I  would  lose  a  vote  if  I  humil- 
iated him.  So  I  laughed  and  said:  "Yep, 
I'm  him.  I  was  just  kidding.  I'm  mighty 
glad  to  have  your  support.  Have  a  cigar." 

But  I  went  away  worried.  My  personal 
friends  knew  me  as  Jimmy.  The  men  I  had 
electioneered  and  handed  cards  to  thought 
my  name  was  Jazz.  On  the  ballot  my  name 
would  appear  JAMES.  Between  "Jimmy," 
"Jim,"  "James"  and  Jazz"  my  fellows  would 
find  lots  of  room  for  confusion.  Every  vote 
that  I  lost  on  that  account  would  be  due  to 
my  own  carelessness. 

It  taught  me  the  lesson  of  exactness.  I 
never  again  put  out  any  puzzling  language, 
but  tried  to  stick  to  words  that  could  not  be 
misunderstood. 

223 


CHAPTER  XL 

FATHER  TOOK  ME  SERIOUSLY 

THERE  was  an  interval  of  nearly  five 
months  between  the  time  of  my  election, 
which  was  in  May,  and  the  date  of  taking 
office  in  September.  I  decided  to  use  this 
time  to  improve  my  qualifications  for  the  job. 
I  returned  to  the  old  home  town  of  Sharon 
and  took  a  course  in  a  business  college.  Again 
I  walked  the  old  familiar  paths  where  as  a 
boy  I  had  roamed  the  woods,  fished  the 
streams,  brought  the  cows  along  the  dusty 
road  from  pasture  and  blacked  the  boots  of 
the  traveling  dudes  at  the  hotel. 

There  is  a  great  thrill  for  the  young  man 
who  comes  home  with  a  heart  beating  high 
with  triumph,  to  see  the  love  and  admiration 
in  his  parents'  eyes.  Father  shook  my  hand 
and  said.  "You're  a  good  boy,  Jimmy,  and 
I'm  proud  of  you.  I  always  knew  you'd  make 
your  mark." 

"I  haven't  made  much  of  a  mark,  dad,"  I 
224 


FATHER  TOOK  ME  SERIOUSLY 

laughed.  "City  clerk  isn't  much.  County 
recorder  is  what  I'm  aiming  for."  In  fact, 
I  had  gone  so  far  as  to  dream  of  being  auditor 
of  the  state  of  Indiana. 

A  jolly  old  uncle  who  was  there  and  who 
was  looked  on  as  the  sage  and  wit  of  the 
Welsh  settlement,  began  kidding  me. 

"From  city  clerk  to  county  recorder  is  only 
a  step,  Jimmy,"  he  said.  "Next  you'll  be 
governor,  and  then  president." 

Father  took  it  seriously. 

"You'll  never  be  president,  lad,"  he  said, 
"because  you  wasn't  born  in  this  country." 
He  seemed  to  think  that  was  the  only  reason. 
He  turned  to  my  uncle  and  explained  regret- 
fully: "Of  all  my  boys,  only  one  has  got  the 
full  American  birthright.  My  youngest  boy, 
Will,  is  the  only  one  that  can  be  president." 

"Well,"  said  the  jolly  old  uncle,  "the  rest 
of  'em  can  be  government  officers." 

Even  this  joke  father  took  as  a  sober  possi- 
bility. I  saw  then  the  full  reason  why  he 
came  to  America.  He  wanted  to  give  his  boys 
boundless  opportunities.  A  humble  man 
himself,  he  had  made  all  his  sacrifices  to 
broaden  the  chances  for  his  children.  This 
was  a  lesson  to  me.  I  could  not  repay  him. 
225 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

I  could  only  resolve  to  follow  his  example, 
to  stand  for  a  square  deal  for  children  every- 
where. 

Mother  was  as  pleased  with  my  humble 
success  as  was  father.  When  I  sat  down  to 
the  table  she  apologized  for  her  cooking  and 
said: 

"After  the  fine  food  you  have  been  eating 
in  the  big  hotels,  you  will  find  our  table 
pretty  common." 

"You're  wrong,  mother,"  I  said.  "The  best 
food  I  ever  had  I  got  right  here  at  your  table. 
You've  never  lived  in  boarding-houses,  but 
father  has.  He  knows  that  it's  a  rough  life, 
and  they  don't  feed  you  on  delicacies.  Hotel 
cookery  is  not  like  the  cookery  in  the  Old 
World.  Over  there  they  make  each  dish  as 
tasty  as  they  can,  and  good  eating  is  one  of 
the  main  objects  in  life.  But  Americans 
don't  like  to  eat.  They  begrudge  the  time  they 
have  to  spend  aMhe  table.  They  get  it  over 
as  soon  as  they  can.  They  seem  to  take  it 
like  medicine;  the  worse  the  medicine  tastes, 
the  better  it  is  for  them.  An  egg  is  something 
that  is  pretty  hard  to  spoil  in  the  cooking. 
Yet  some  of  these  boarding-house  cooks  are 
such  masters  of  the  art  that  they  can  fix  up 
226 


FATHER  TOOK  ME  SERIOUSLY 

a  plate  of  steak,  eggs  and  potatoes  and  make 
them  all  as  tasteless  as  a  chip  of  wood.  I've 
had  this  kind  of  fare  for  the  last  few  years, 
and  getting  back  to  your  table  is  the  best  part 
of  home-coming." 

Father  was  still  a  puddler,  and  to  show  my 
appreciation  of  all  he  had  done  for  me,  I 
went  into  the  mill  every  afternoon  that  sum- 
mer and  worked  a  heat  or  two  for  him  while 
he  went  home  and  rested  in  the  shade. 

The  workout  did  me  good.  It  kept  my 
body  vigorous  and  cleared  my  brain  so  that 
my  studies  were  easy  for  me,  and  I  advanced 
with  my  education  faster  than  ever  before. 

This  proved  to  me  that  schooling  should 
combine  the  book  stuff  with  the  shop  work. 
Instead  of  interfering  with  each  other,  they 
help  each  other.  The  hand  work  makes  the 
books  seem  more  enjoyable. 


CHAPTER  XLI 

A  PAVING  CONTRACTOR  PUTS  ME  ON  THE  PAVING 

I  WAS  the  only  Republican  elected  that  year. 
But  for  this  exception  the  Democrats  would 
have  made  a  clean  sweep  of  the  city.  If  the 
editor  had  not  charged  me  with  being  illit- 
erate I  would  neither  have  been  nominated 
nor  elected.  When  I  appeared  before  au- 
diences in  the  "swell  end"  of  town  and  wrote 
my  lessons  on  my  little  slate,  I  gained  their 
sympathy.  They  believed  in  fair  play.  And 
I  found  I  had  not  lost  their  support  by 
thrashing  the  editor. 

Nearly  all  of  the  mill  workers  in  Elwood 
voted  for  me.  I  supposed  that  I  had  made 
many  personal  enemies  among  the  men  by 
refusing  to  take  their  grievances  up  with  the 
bosses  when  I  thought  the  men  were  wrong. 
But  the  election  proved  they  were  my  friends 
after  all.  The  confidence  of  my  own  fellows 
pleased  me  greatly.  Later  on,  the  men  as  a 
further  token  of  their  good  will  clubbed 
228 


A  PAVING  CONTRACTOR 

together  and  gave  me  a  gold  watch.  This 
gave  me  greater  joy,  no  doubt,  than  Napoleon 
felt  when,  with  his  own  hand,  he  placed  a 
gold  crown  upon  his  head. 

When  it  came  time  to  qualify  and  be  sworn 
into  office  I  found  trouble.  The  Republican 
boss  was  disgruntled  because  only  one  Re- 
publican was  elected  while  the  Democrats 
got  everything  else.  He  wanted  me  to  give 
up  the  office.  "Let  the  tail  go  with  the  hide," 
he  said.  "Let  'em  have  it  all."  His  idea  was 
to  give  the  Democrats  a  closed  family  circle, 
so  that  when  temptation  came  along,  they 
would  feel  safe  in  falling  for  it.  He  feared 
that  a  Republican  in  the  house  to  watch  them 
would  scare  them  away  from  the  bait.  He 
wanted  them  to  take  bribes  and  be  ruined  by 
the  scandal,  and  that  would  bring  the  Repub- 
licans back  to  power.  It  was  a  good  enough 
way  to  "turn  the  rogues  out"  by  first  letting 
them  become  rogues,  but  my  heart  was  not 
set  on  party  success  only.  I  believed  in  pro- 
tecting the  public.  So  I  went  ahead  and  got 
bondsmen  to  qualify  me.  But  as  often  as  I 
got  men  to  sign  my  bond,  the  boss  went  to 
them  and  got  them  off  again.  A  firm  of 
lawyers,  Greenlee  &  Call,  stood  by  me  in  my 
229 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

struggle  to  make  my  bond.  These  men  were 
ten  years  older  than  I.  I  was  twenty-five. 
They  acted  as  godfathers  to  me.  They  gave 
me  the  use  of  their  library,  and  throughout 
my  term  as  city  clerk  I  spent  my  nights  poring 
over  their  law  books.  I  became  well 
grounded  in  municipal  law  and  municipal 
finance.  I  was  able  to  pay  back  their  kind- 
ness some  years  later  when  C.  M.  Greenlee 
aspired  to  be  judge  of  the  Superior  Court  of 
Madison  County.  I  went  to  the  convention 
as  a  delegate  and  worked  hard  for  Judge 
Greenlee  until  he  was  nominated,  and 
elected. 

The  city  administration  of  which  I  was  a 
member  let  many  contracts.  As  I  said  before, 
a  cross-roads  town  had  become  a  city  and 
there  were  miles  of  paving  and  sewer  to  put 
in,  and  scores  of  public  buildings  to  go  up. 
Old  Francis  Harbit  was  the  Democratic 
mayor,  and  he  didn't  intend  that  the  con- 
tractors should  graft  on  the  city  nor  give 
boodle  to  the  officials.  I  remember  one  stir- 
ring occasion.  There  was  a  big  contract  for 
sewers  to  be  let,  and  if  a  certain  bid  should 
go  through,  the  contractor  would  profit 
greatly.  Big  Jeff  Rowley  (I'll  call  him)  was 
230 


A  PAVING  CONTRACTOR 

the  grafting  contractor  who  had  ruined  the 
Republican  administration.  He  was  six  feet, 
two  inches  tall  in  his  stocking  feet.  He  had 
put  in  his  sealed  bid  and  then  had  approached 
everybody  with  his  proposition.  His  over- 
tures were  scorned  and  he  was  told  that  we 
were  not  out  for  boodle  but  were  "playing  the 
game  on  the  square"  (that  had  been  my  cam- 
paign slogan).  It  finally  dawned  on  the  cor- 
rupt old  bully  that  the  lowest  bid  would  get 
the  contract.  He  then  came  into  my  office 
and  took  down  his  bid  to  revise  it.  It  was 
such  a  big  contract  that  he  could  not  afford 
to  lose  it.  I  told  him  that  if  his  bid  was  not 
back  in  time  I  would  so  note  it. 

Bids  were  to  be  opened  that  night  and  read 
by  me  before  the  mayor  and  council.  I  was 
familiar  with  every  detail  of  the  law  gov- 
erning municipal  bonds  and  contract  letting. 
We  had  advertised  that  bids  must  be  filed 
before  seven-thirty  that  evening.  Big  Jeff 
took  down  his  bid  at  seven-fifteen  and  filed 
his  new  bid  at  seven  forty-five;  fifteen  min- 
utes after  the  legal  time  limit. 

The  council  was  in  session  and  hundreds  of 
citizens  were  there  to  protest  against  any 
more  deals  in  letting  contracts  at  exorbitant 
231 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

prices.  I  opened  and  read  aloud  the  various 
bids,  including  that  of  the  big  boss,  Jeff  Row- 
ley, adding  that  Jeff's  bid  had  been  filed  too 
late  to  be  legal. 

"You  lie!"  he  screamed.  "You're  a  Welsh 
liar,  and  I'll  kill  you  for  this!"  The  threat 
was  heard  by  the  council  and  the  citizens. 
But  the  man  seemed  so  terrible  that  no  one 
dared  reprimand  him. 

A  few  moments  later  the  city  attorney  sent 
down  to  the  clerk's  office  for  some  blanks. 
Jeff  was  waiting  behind  a  corner  of  the  hall. 
He  hit  me  a  blow  in  the  neck  that  knocked  rne 
four  yards.  It  was  the  "rabbit  blow"  and  he 
expected  it  to  break  my  neck.  The  hard 
muscles  that  the  puddling  furnace  put  there 
saved  my  life.  I  sprang  up,  and  he  came 
after  me  again.  I  seized  the  big  fellow  by 
the  ankles  and  threw  him  down.  Then  I 
battered  his  head  against  the  floor  until  I 
was  satisfied  that  he  could  do  me  no  more 
harm.  He  went  home  and  took  to  his  bed. 

He  announced  that  when  he  got  out  he 
would  charge  me  with  assault.  I  went  before 
the  mayor  and  offered  to  plead  guilty  to  such 
a  charge.  The  mayor  protested  against  it. 
He  said  I  had  done  the  right  thing  in  pro- 
232 


A  PAVING  CONTRACTOR 

tecting  the  honor  of  the  city,  and  that  the 
citizens  would  not  permit  my  action  to  cost 
me  money.  The  local  banker  took  up  a  col- 
lection to  pay  my  fine  in  case  a  fine  should  be 
assessed  against  me. 

My  salary  as  city  clerk  was  forty  dollars  a 
month.  My  wages  in  the  tin  mill  were  seven 
dollars  a  day.  A  week  in  the  mill  would  have 
brought  me  more  than  a  month's  pay  in  the 
city  office.  But  I  hoped  the  clerkship  would 
lead  to  something  better. 

One  incident  that  happened  while  I  was 
city  clerk  I  have  already  related.  The  city 
attorney  almost  sent  a  man  to  jail  because  he 
couldn't  understand  the  lawyer's  questions. 
I  put  the  lawyer's  language  into  simpler 
words,  and  the  man  then  understood  and 
quickly  cleared  himself  of  the  charge  against 
him.  At  another  time,  the  mill  owners  peti- 
tioned for  the  vacation  of  an  alley  because 
they  wanted  to  build  a  railroad  switch  there 
to  give  access  to  a  loading-out  station  of  the 
mill. 

"I  suppose,"  their  representative  told  me, 
"that  since  this  would  be  a  favor  to  the  mill, 
and  you  were  opposed  by  the  mill  owners, 
you  will  hand  it  to  us  in  this  matter." 
233 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

"Why  should  I?"  I  asked.  "Don't  you  think 
you  ought  to  have  this  alley?" 

"Certainly  we  do,  or  we  wouldn't  have 
asked  for  it." 

"Do  you  think  the  city  needs  the  alley 
worse  than  you  do?" 

"No.  It  is  an  alley  only  on  paper.  There 
are  no  residences  there  and  nobody  needs 
the  alley  but  us." 

"But  you  think  because  I  am  a  labor  man 
and  you  are  a  mill  owner,  and  you  and  I  have 
had  many  hot  fights  over  wage  questions, 
that  I  will  fight  you  on  this  just  for  spite?" 

"Such  things  have  been  done." 

"Well,  I  am  not  spiteful.  Many  a  time  I 
have  made  the  men  mad  at  me  by  being  fair 
to  you.  Spite  and  malice  should  have  no 
place  in  dealings  between  employer  and 
employee.  If  you  had  a  chance,  would  you 
give  the  men  a  dirty  deal  just  for  spite?" 

"We're  business  men,"  he  said.  "And  we 
never  act  through  malice,  but  we  often  ex- 
pect it  from  the  other  side." 

"Well,  don't  expect  it  from  me.    As  a  city 

official  my  whole  duty  is  to  the  city.     If  we 

give  you  that  railroad  switch  it  will  help  the 

mill  and  can't  hurt  the  city.    Without  your 

234 


A  PAVING  CONTRACTOR 

mills  there  would  be  no  city  here,  and  all  the 
alleys  would  be  vacated,  with  grass  growing 
in  them.  If  I  took  advantage  of  my  city  job 
to  oppress  your  mill  business,  I  would  be  two 
kinds  of  a  scoundrel,  a  public  scoundrel  and 
a  private  one.  I  favor  the  vacation  of  the 
alley  and  when  the  council  meets  next  Wed- 
nesday I  am  sure  they  will  do  this  for  you." 


CHAPTER  XLII 

THE  EVERLASTING  MORALIZER 

I  PLAYED  the  game  fair  throughout  my  term 
of  office.  I  hate  dishonesty  instinctively.  I 
like  the  approval  of  my  own  conscience  and 
the  approval  of  men.  This  is  egotism,  of 
course.  I  claim  nothing  else  for  it.  I  am  no 
prophet.  I  do  not  claim  to  be  inspired.  The 
weaknesses  that  all  flesh  is  heir  to,  I  am  not 
immune  from.  I  write  this  story  not  to  vin- 
dicate my  own  wit  nor  to  point  out  new  paths 
for  human  thought  to  follow.  I  am  a  follower 
of  the  old  trails,  an  endorser  of  the  old 
maxims.  I  merely  add  my  voice  to  the  thou- 
sands who  have  testified  before  me  that  the 
old  truths  are  the  only  truths,  and  they  are  all 
the  guidance  that  we  need.  I  am  an  educa- 
tor of  the  young,  not  an  astounder  of  the  old; 
and  it  is  for  the  boys  and  girls  who  read  my 
book  that  I  thus  point  the  morals  that  life's 
tale  has  taught  me. 

Had  I  proved  unfaithful  in  my  first  office 
236 


THE  EVERLASTING  MORALIZER 

I  could  not  have  gone  to  higher  offices.  My 
opponents  would  have  "had  something  on 
me."  As  secretary  of  labor,  I  am  called  on  to 
settle  strikes  and  to  adjust  disputes  between 
employers  and  employee*.  I  could  do  noth- 
ing if  either  side  distrusted  me.  But  since 
both  sides  believe  me  to  be  honest,  they  get 
right  down  to  brass  tacks  and  discuss  the 
cases  on  their  merits  only.  Sometimes  the 
employees  ask  too  much,  sometimes  the  em- 
ployers. When  either  side  goes  too  far  I  feel 
free  to  oppose  it. 

I  approach  each  problem  not  only  from  the 
economic  but  from  the  human  angle.  I  took 
my  guidance  from  the  words  of  President 
Harding,  when  he  said: 

"The  human  element  comes  first.  I  want 
the  employers  to  understand  the  hopes  and 
yearnings  of  the  workers,  and  I  want  the  wage 
earners  to  understand  the  burdens  and 
anxieties  of  the  wage  payers,  and  all  of  them 
must  understand  their  obligations  to  the 
people  and  to  the  republic.  Out  of  this  under- 
standing will  come  social  justice  which  is  so 
essential  to  the  highest  human  happiness." 

The  Labor  Department  has  been  able  to 
settle,  after  candid  argument,  thousands  of 
disputes     saving     millions     of     dollars     for 
237 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

workers  and  employers  and  relieving  the  pub- 
lic from  the  great  loss  and  inconvenience  that 
comes  with  strikes  and  industrial  war.  I 
have  but  one  aim,  and  that  is  justice.  I  know 
but  one  policy,  and  that  is  honesty.  I  am 
slow  to  reach  decisions.  I  must  hear  both 
sides.  I  want  the  facts,  and  all  the  facts. 
When  all  the  facts  are  in  my  mind  the  argu- 
ing ends;  the  judgment  begins.  I  judge  by 
conscience  and  am  guided  by  the  Golden 
Rule.  Decision  comes,  and  it  is  as  nearly 
right  as  God  has  given  me  power  to  see  the 
right. 

Out  of  four  thousand  disputes  handled  by 
the  Department,  three  thousand  six  hundred 
were  settled.  These  directly  involved  approx- 
imately three  and  one-half  million  workers 
and  indirectly  many  others.  At  first  seventy 
per  cent,  of  the  cases  were  strikes  before  con- 
ciliation was  requested.  Now,  in  a  majority 
of  the  cases  presented,  strikes  and  lockouts 
are  prevented  or  speedily  adjusted  through 
our  efforts. 

This  was  due  to  perfect  candor  in  talking. 

Honest    opinions    were    honestly    set    forth. 

Both  sides  took  confidence  in  each  other,  and 

both  sides  accepted  my  suggestions,  believing 

238 


THE  EVERLASTING  MORALIZER 

them  sincere  and  fair.  And  so  I  say  to  the 
young  men  that  honesty  is  the  best  policy 
because  it  is  the  only  policy  that  wins.  The 
communists  tell  the  young  that  honesty  is 
not  the  best  policy.  They  say  that  the  rich 
man  teaches  the  poor  to  be  honest  so  that  the 
rich  can  do  all  the  stealing.  They  say  that 
the  moral  code  is  "dope"  given  by  the  strong 
to  paralyze  the  weak  and  keep  them  down. 
It  is  not  so.  Honesty  is  the  power  that  lifts 
men  and  nations  up  to  greatness.  It  is  a  law 
of  nature  just  as  surely  as  gravity  is  a  natural 
law.  But  one  is  physical  nature  and  the 
other  moral  nature.  A  fool  can  see  that  phys- 
ical laws  are  eternal  and  unbreakable.  The 
wise  can  see  that  the  moral  lawr  is  just  as  pow- 
erful and  as  everlasting. 

Had  I  not  won  the  people's  confidence 
while  I  was  city  clerk  of  Elwood,  Indiana,  my 
public  career  would  have  ended  there.  But 
after  four  years  in  that  office  I  aspired  to  be 
county  recorder.  The  employers  who  once 
had  feared  that  I  would  be  unfair,  now  said, 
"Davis  is  the  man  for  the  job,"  and  so  I  got 
their  vote  as  well  as  the  vote  of  the  workers, 
and  I  was  elected  to  that  higher  office  by  a 
great  majority. 

239 


CHAPTER  XLIII 

• 

FROM   TIN    WORKER   TO    SMALL    CAPITALIST 

DURING  my  term  as  county  recorder  at  An- 
derson, Indiana,  I  saved  money.  I  was  un- 
married and  had  no  dissipations  but  books, 
and  books  cost  little.  »  I  had  lent  money  to 
several  fellows  who  wanted  to  get  a  business 
education.  By  the  year  1906,  or  ten  years 
after  I  quit  the  mill,  the  money  I  had  lent  to 
men  for  their  education  in  business  colleges 
had  all  come  back  to  me  with  interest.  All 
my  brothers  had  grown  up  and  left  home,  and 
mother  wrote  that  I  ought  not  to  send  so  much 
money  to  her  as  she  had  no  use  for  it, 
Although  unmarried,  I  had  bought  a  house, 
and  still  had  several  thousand  dollars  of  capi- 
tal. So  from  time  to  time  when  some  friend 
saw  an  opportunity  to  start  a  business  in  a 
small  way,  I  backed  him  with  a  thousand 
dollars.  My  security  in  these  cases  was  my 
knowledge  of  the  man's  character.  Some  of 
these  ventures  were  in  oil  leases  in  which  my 
chance  of  profits  was  good  and  they  ranged 
from  novelty  manufacture  down  to  weekly 
240 


FROM  TIN  WORKER  TO  CAPITALIST 

newspapers  in  which  no  great  profit  was  pos- 
sible. So  many  of  the  ventures  thrived,  that 
by  the  time  I  was  forty  I  was  rated  as  a  pros- 
perous young  man.  This  gave  me  a  great  con- 
fidence in  myself  and  in  the  institutions  of 
this  country.  A  land  where  a  boy  can  enter 
the  mills  at  eleven,  learn  two  trades,  acquire 
a  sound  business  education  and  make  a  com- 
petence in  his  thirties  is  not  such  a  bad  coun- 
try as  the  hot-headed  Reds  would  have  us 
believe.  I  was  now  launched  on  a  business 
career  and  my  investments  were  paying  me 
much  larger  revenues  than  I  could  earn  at 
my  trade.  It  was  a  rule  of  the  union  that 
when  a  man  ceased  to  work  in  the  iron,  steel 
or  tin  trades  he  forfeited  his  membership. 
However,  the  boys  thought  that  Mahlon  M. 
Garland — a  puddler  who  went  to  Congress — 
and  myself  had  done  noteworthy  service  to 
the  labor  cause,  and  they  passed  a  resolution 
permitting  us  to  remain  in  the  organization. 
Mr.  Garland  served  six  years  in  Congress  and 
died  during  his  term  of  office.  I  still  carry 
my  membership  and  pay  my  dues. 

I  was  in  France  when  the  great  Hinden- 
burg  offensive  in  the  spring  of  1916  over- 
whelmed the  Allies.    The  French  soldiers  I 
241 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

mcf  were  worried  and  asked  what  word  I 
brought  them  from  America.  I  said:  "I  am 
an  iron  worker  and  can  speak  for  the  work- 
ers. Their  hearts  are  in  this  cause.  They 
will  work  as  one  man  until  all  the  iron  in  the 
mountains  of  America  is  hurled  into  the  belly 
of  the  Huns." 

The  war  was  an  iron  war.  The  kaiser  had 
the  steel  and  the  coal  that  move  armies. 
France  lacked  these,  and  the  Germans 
thought  she  was  doomed.  They  cut  the 
French  railroads  that  would  have  brought  the 
troops  and  munitions  to  defend  Verdun. 
Then  the  Germans  attacked  this  point  in 
overwhelming  numbers.  But  the  French 
troops  went  to  Verdun  without  the  aid  of 
railroads.  The  Germans  did  not  dream  that 
such  a  thing  was  possible.  But  America  had 
given  the  world  a  new  form  of  transporta- 
tion,— trains  that  run  without  rails  and  with- 
out coal.  Motor-trucks,  driven  by  gasoline, 
carried  the  troops  and  munitions  to  Verdun. 
And  so,  after  all,  the  genius  of  America  was 
there  smiting  the  crown  prince  to  his  ruin 
long  before  the  first  American  doughboy 
could  set  foot  in  France. 

For  years  the  names  of  oil  king  and  iron 
master  have  been  a  hissing  and  a  byword 
242 


FROM  TIN  WORKER  TO  CAPITALIST 

among  the  hot-heads  in  America.  Yet  oil 
king  and  iron  master  filled  a  world  with 
motor  lorries.  The  blessings  these  have 
brought  to  every  man  are  more  than  he  can 
measure.  We  mention  this  as  one:  They 
stopped  the  Germans  at  Verdun  and  saved 
our  civilization.  It  was  an  iron  war  and  our 
iron  won. 

My  days  were  spent  at  forge  and  puddling 
furnace.  The  iron  that  I  made  is  civilization's 
tools.  I  ride  by  night  in  metal  bedrooms.  I 
hear  the  bridges  rumble  underneath  the 
wheels,  and  they  are  part  of  me.  I  see  tall 
cities  looking  down  from  out  the  sky  and 
know  that  I  have  given  a  rib  to  make  those 
giants.  I  am  a  part  of  all  I  see,  and  life  takes 
on  an  epic  grandeur.  I  have  done  the  best 
I  could  to  build  America. 

If  God  has  given  it  to  the  great  captains  to 
do  more  than  the  privates  to  make  the  plan 
and  shout  the  order,  shall  I  feel  thankless 
for  my  share  of  glory?  Shall  I  be  envious  and 
turn  traitor  and  want  to  crucify  the  leaders 
that  have  blessed  mankind? 

I  am  content  to  occupy  my  secondary  sta- 
tion, to  do  the  things  that  I  can  do,  and  never 
to  feel  embittered  because  other  men  have; 
gifts  far  surpassing  mine. 
243 


CHAPTER  XLIV 

A  CHANCE  TO  REALIZE  A  DREAM 

ON  OCTOBER  27,  1906,  I  joined  the  Loyal 
Order  of  Moose  at  Crawfordsville,  Indiana, 
and  a  new  chapter  in  my  life  began.  The 
purpose  of  the  Order  was  merely  social,  but 
its  vast  possibilities  took  my  imagination  by 
storm.  For  I  believed  that  man's  instinct  for 
fraternity  was  a  great  reservoir  of  social 
energy  which,  if  harnessed  aright,  could  lift 
our  civilization  nearer  to  perfection. 

On  the  night  of  my  election  and  initiation 
to  membership,  the  Supreme  Lodge  was  in 
convention  and  they  requested  me  to  make 
a  talk.  I  suggested  a  scheme  to  save  the 
wastage  of  child  life  resulting  from  the  death 
of  parents  and  the  scattering  of  their  babies; 
and  also  to  provide  for  the  widows  and  aged. 
This  problem  had  haunted  me  from  boyhood 
when,  as  I  have  told,  I  was  the  bearer  of 
death  news  to  the  widows  and  orphans  of  the 
mill  town.  I  felt  that  the  Loyal  Order  of 
Moose  could  cope  with  this  problem.  They 
244 


A  CHANCE  TO  REALIZE  A  DREAM 

elected  me  supreme  organizer  and  put  me  in 
charge  of  the  organization  work,  and  after 
several  years  I  showed  so  much  zeal  that  the 
office  of  director  general  was  created  and  I 
was  put  in  full  charge. 

The  Order  was  then  nineteen  years  old, 
having  been  founded  in  St.  Louis  as  char- 
tered in  1888,  in  Louisville,  Kentucky.  It  had 
thrived  for  a  while  and  then  dwindled.  At 
the  time  I  joined  there  were  only  two  lodges 
surviving,  with  a  total  roll  of  some  two  hun- 
dred and  forty-six  members.  I  set  to  work 
with  great  enthusiasm,  hoping  to  enroll  a  half 
million  men.  This  would  make  the  Order 
strong  enough  to  insure  a  home  and  an  edu- 
cation for  all  children  left  destitute  by  the 
death  of  members.  In  fancy  I  again  beheld 
the  vision  of  long  trains  of  lodge  men  going 
to  their  yearly  meeting,  but  this  time,  in  a 
city  of  their  own  building,  and  over  the  gate- 
way to  this  red-roofed  town  I  saw  the  legend : 

THE  CITY  OF  HAPPY  CHILDREN 

But  alas  for  dreams!     Any  one  can  have 
them,  but  their  realization  is  not  always  pos- 
sible.   The  men  in  the  Moose  before  me  had 
245 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

fought  vainly  for  these  high  ideals.  At  the 
end  of  my  first  year  as  director  general  I  had 
not  made  one-tenth  the  progress  I  had  hoped 
for.  Figuring  on  the  rate  of  progress  I  was 
making,  I  saw  that  a  lifetime  would  be  too 
short  to  accomplish  anything.  It  was  then 
that  I  would  have  despaired,  if  my  Welsh 
blood  had  not  been  so  stubborn.  I  summoned 
new  courage  and  went  on  with  the  work.  At 
the  end  of  the  fourth  year  I  began  to  see  re- 
sults from  my  preliminary  efforts.  The  con- 
vention of  1910  showed  that  the  membership 
was  eighty  thousand,  distributed  among  three 
hundred  and  thirty-three  lodges.  It  was 
resolved  to  start  the  actual  work  of  founding 
an  educational  institution.  A  tax  of  two  cents 
a  week  was  laid  on  members  and  later  in- 
creased to  four  cents.  Land  was  bought,  a 
building  erected  and  in  1913  the  school  was 
dedicated  by  Thomas  R.  Marshall,  Vice- 
President  of  the  United  States.  There  were 
eleven  children  established  in  the  home. 
Soon  the  lodge  membership  increased  enor- 
mously. Having  passed  the  hundred  thou- 
sand mark  it  swept  on  to  the  half  million 
goal.  The  "Mooseheart  idea,"  as  we  called  it, 
had  caught  the  imagination  of  the  men. 
246 


A  CHANCE  TO  REALIZE  A  DREAM 

To-day  the  city  of  Mooseheart  in  the  Fox 
River  Valley,  thirty-seven  miles  west  of  Chi- 
cago, is  the  home  of  more  than  a  thousand 
fatherless  children  and  one  hundred  and 
fifteen  mothers  who  are  there  with  their  chil- 
dren, and  several  old  men  whose  working 
days  are  over.  The  dream  of  the  Moose  has 
come  true.  In  many  ways  the  "City  of 
Happy  Childhood"  is  the  most  beautiful  and 
the  most  wonderful  city  in  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XLV 

THE  DREAM  COMES  TRUE 

WHAT  kind  of  school  is  Mooseheart?  That 
can  not  be  answered  by  making  comparisons, 
for  it  is  the  only  school  of  its  kind.  When  the 
Moose  committee  met  to  decide  what  sort  of 
school  it  would  build,  somebody  suggested  a 
normal  school,  a  school  to  teach  the  young 
how  to  become  teachers. 

I  objected.  "The  world  is  well  supplied 
with  teachers,"  I  said.  "Everybody  wants  to 
teach  the  other  fellow  what  to  do,  but  nobody 
cares  to  do  it.  Hand  work  will  make  a 
country  rich  and  mouth  work  make  it  poor. 
All  the  speeches  I  have  ever  made  have  never 
added  a  dollar  to  the  taxable  value  of 
America.  But  the  tin  and  iron  I  wrought 
with  my  hands  have  helped  make  America 
the  richest  country  in  the  world.  The  Indians 
were  philosophers  and  orators;  they  could 
outtalk  the  white  man  every  time.  But  the 
Indians  had  no  houses  and  no  clothes.  They 
wouldn't  work  with  their  hands.  A  race  that 
248 


THE  DREAM  COMES  TRUE 

works  with  its  hands  has  run  the  Indian  off 
the  earth.  If  we  quit  working  now  and  try 
to  live  on  philosophy,  some  race  that  still 
knows  how  to  work  will  run  us  out  of  this 
country.  The  first  law  of  civilized  life  is 
labor.  Labor  is  the  giver  of  all  good  things. 
Let  us  teach  these  orphans  how  to  apply 
their  labor,  and  after  that  all  things  will  be 
added  unto  them." 

And  so  we  established  a  pre-vocational 
school  where  the  young  people  are  taught 
farming,  carpentry,  cement  construction, 
blacksmithing,  gas  engine  building  and  doz- 
ens of  other  fundamental  trades  that  nourish 
our  industrial  life,  a  life  that  draws  no  nutri- 
ment from  Greek  or  Latin.  I  am  not  opposed 
to  literature  and  the  classics.  I  make  no  war 
on  the  dead  languages.  The  war  that  killed 
them  did  the  business.  Why  should  I  come 
along  and  cut  off  their  feet,  when  some  one 
else  has  been  there  and  cut  off  their  heads? 
But  as  an  educator  I  promote  the  industrial 
trades,  because  they  educated  and  promoted 
me.  I  have  done  well  in  life,  and  if  you  ask 
me  how  I  did  it,  I'm  telling  you.  Industry 
first  and  literature  afterward.  And  if  you 
wish  to  see  that  kind  of  school  in  action,  you 
can  see  it  at  Mooseheart,  Illinois. 
249 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

There  is  a  school  with  more  than  a  thou- 
sand students,  boys  and  girls  of  various  ages, 
ranging  from  one  month  to  eighteen  years. 
Some  of  the  students  were  born  there,  the 
mother  having  been  admitted  with  her  young- 
sters soon  after  the  loss  of  the  father.  Each 
lad  will  get  an  introduction  to  a  dozen  trades, 
and  when  he  selects  the  one  that  fits  him 
best,  he  will  specialize  in  that  and  graduate 
at  eighteen,  prepared  for  life.  This  educa- 
tion is  the  gift  of  more  than  half  a  million 
foster  fathers.  The  Moose  are  mostly  work- 
ing men,  and  so  they  equip  their  wards  for 
industrial  life,  and  then  place  them  on  the 
job. 

A  boy  that  knows  how  to  build  concrete 
houses  will  not  have  to  sleep  in  haystacks. 
If  every  high-school  boy  in  America  was  a 
carpenter  and  cement,  builder  how  long 
would  the  housing  shortage  last?  "The  birds 
of  the  air  have  their  nests,"  says  the  Bible. 
And  we  know  why  they  have  them.  Every 
bird  knows  how  to  build  its  nest.  Nature 
teaches  them  their  trade.  But  men  must 
learn  their  trades  in  school.  I  visited  a  col- 
lege once  and  saw  how  Greek  was  taught. 
They  showed  me  a  clay  model  of  ancient 
250 


THE  DREAM  COMES  TRUE 

Athens  and  pointed  out  the  house  that  each 
philosopher  and  poet  lived  in  thousands  of 
years  ago.  "Where  are  the  houses,"  I  asked 
the  graduates,  "that  you  are  going  to  live  in 
to-morrow?"  "Heaven  only  knows,"  they 
said.  "We'll  have  to  take  our  chances  in  the 
general  scarcity;  our  fate  is  on  the  knees  of 
the  gods."  The  luck  of  the  Mooseheart  boy 
is  not  on  the  knees  of  the  gods;  it  is  in  his 
own  hands. 

I  visited  the  Latin  department  and  heard 
of  Rome's  ancient  grandeur.  "The  Romans," 
they  told  me,  "were  not  philosophers,  but 
builders.  They  built  concrete  roads  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth.  But  their  soldiers  brought 
back  malarial  fever  from  Africa.  It 
destroyed  the  builders  and  their  secret  per- 
ished with  them.  Eighty  years  ago  concrete 
was  rediscovered."  I  asked  the  students: 
"Do  you  know  how  to  make  concrete?"  "I'll 
say  we  don't,"  they  answered.  And  that's 
how  much  good  their  Latin  education  had 
done  them. 

The  Mooseheart  boys  know  how  to  make 
those  concrete  roads  and  how  to  build  the 
motor-trucks  that  travel  on  them.  "Trans- 
portation is  civilization."  We  teach  civiliza- 
251 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

tion  at  the  Mooseheart  school.  We  teach  art, 
too.  But  what  is  art  without  civilization? 
The  cave  men  were  artists  and  drew  pictures 
on  their  walls.  But  you  can't  eat  pictures. 
There  is  a  picture  on  every  loaf  of  bread. 
You  always  slice  the  colored  label  off  the 
loaf  and  eat  the  bread  and  throw  the  art 
away.  The  Russians  quit  work  a  few  seasons 
ago,  and  now  they  are  selling  their  art  treas- 
ures cheap  to  the  roughneck  nations  that 
stuck  to  the  pick-ax  and  the  plow.  The  moral 
is:  Keep  working  and  you'll  get  the  chromo. 
This  truth  was  taught  at  Mooseheart  long 
before  the  Russians  saw  the  point  and 
awarded  us  their  picture  gallery. 

What  I  want  to  emphasize  is  that  we  are 
not  opposed  to  art  and  literature.  All  men 
want  them;  need  them.  We  teach  how  to  get 
them. 


CHAPTER  XLVI 

THE  MOOSEHEART  IDEA 

THE  majority  of  the  Moose  are  men  in  the 
mechanical  trades.  But  the  primary  trade, 
the  one  on  which  all  others  rest,  is  agriculture. 
The  men  knew  this,  and  so  they  founded 
Mooseheart  on  the  soil.  It  is  an  agricultural 
school.  It  occupies  more  than  a  thousand 
acres  in  the  richest  farming  region  of  Illinois. 
The  first  thing  the  students  learn  is  that  all 
wealth  comes  out  of  the  earth.  The  babies 
play  in  the  meadows  and  learn  the  names  of 
flowers  and  birds.  The  heritage  of  childhood 
is  the  out-of-doors.  I  heard  of  some  children 
in  the  city  who  found  a  mouse  and  thought  it 
was  a  rabbit.  But  when  the  city-born  children 
come  to  Mooseheart  they  come  into  their  own. 
They  trap  rabbits  and  woodchucks,  fight 
bumblebees'  nests,  wade  and  fish  in  the  creek 
and  go  boating  and  swimming  in  the  river 
and  the  clear  lake. 

When  a  boy  gets  old  enough  to  leave  the 
kindergarten  and  start  in  the  primary  school 
253 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

he  mixes  agricultural  studies  with  his  books. 
First  he  plants  a  small  garden  and  tends  it. 
Then  he  is  taught  to  raise  chickens.  Next  he 
learns  swine  husbandry  and  then  dairying 
and  the  handling  of  horses.  The  girls  learn 
poultry-raising,  butter-making,  gardening, 
cooking,  dressmaking  and  millinery. 

After  the  boy  has  had  a  general  course  in 
all  the  branches  of  agriculture  he  is  per- 
mitted to  specialize  in  any  one  of  them  if  he 
wants  to.  He  can  make  an  exhaustive  study 
of  grain  farming,  dairying,  stock  breeding, 
bee  culture,  horticulture  and  landscape  gar- 
dening. 

After  this  grounding  in  agriculture,  which 
all  the  boys  must  have,  the  student  gets  an 
introduction  to  the  mechanical  trades.  Then 
he  may  select  a  particular  trade  and  special- 
ize. The  usual  grammar-school  and  high- 
school  courses  are  taught  to  all  the  students, 
also  swimming  and  dancing  and  music,  both 
vocal  and  instrumental.  The  kindergarten 
has  a  babies'  band,  and  both  the  girls  and 
boys  have  their  own  brass  bands  and  orches- 
tras. 

Students  are  graduated  when  they  are 
eighteen.  Up  to  that  time  they  are  permitted 
254 


THE  MOOSEHEART  IDEA 

to  stay  and  learn  as  many  trades  as  they  can. 
Learning  comes  easy  in  such  a  school  as 
Mooseheart,  and  many  of  the  boys  go  out 
with  two  or  more  finished  trades.  Music  is 
one  of  the  trades  that  the  boys  double  in. 
We  have  graduated  many  fine  musicians,  but 
none  who  didn't  know  a  mechanical  trade  as 
well  and,  on  top  of  it  all,  he  knew  how  to  run 
a  farm.  Such  a  boy  can  serve  his  country 
in  peace  or  war.  Before  men  can  eat  they 
have  to  have  food,  and  he  knows  how  to 
raise  it.  To  enjoy  their  food  they  must  have 
a  house  to  live  in,  and  he  knows  how  to  build 
it.  After  a  house  and  food  conies  music. 
This  lad  can  play  a  tune  for  the  cabaret. 

One  of  Mooseheart's  earliest  graduates 
made  a  high  record  in  his  academic  studies 
and  mastered  the  trade  of  cook,  pastry  cook, 
nurseryman,  cement  modeler,  cornetist, 
saxophone  player  and  landscape  gardener. 
He  was  brilliant  in  all  these  lines  and  ready 
to  make  a  living  at  any  one  of  them.  And  if 
all  these  trades  should  fail,  he  was  yet  a 
scientific  farmer  and  could  go  to  the  land 
anywhere  and  make  it  produce  bigger  crops 
than  the  untrained  man  who  was  born  on  the 
soil. 

255 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

What  other  school  in  the  world  will  give  a 
boy  at  eighteen  an  equipment  like  that?  I 
ask  this,  not  to  disparage  the  old-fashioned 
schools,  but  to  call  their  attention  to  what  the 
new  are  doing. 


CHAPTER  XLVII 

LIFE'S  PROBLEMS 

MOOSEHEART  is  at  once  a  farm,  a  school  and 
a  town.  The  boys  help  handle  the  crops  and 
herds  under  the  guidance  of  the  experts  who 
teach  the  classes  in  agriculture.  For  extra 
work  in  the  fields  the  boys  receive  pay.  They 
save  their  money  to  buy  the  tools  of  their 
trade.  The  bandsmen  when  they  graduate 
go  out  with  fine  instruments  bought  with  their 
own  earnings  during  their  school  years.  "Pre- 
paration for  life"  is  the  one  aim  of  Moose- 
heart.  Therefore  at  Mooseheart  the  boy  or 
girl  will  encounter  every  problem  that  he 
will  encounter  in  his  struggle  in  the  wider 
world.  Nothing  is  done  for  him  that  he  can 
do  for  himself.  He  is  taught  no  false  theories. 
But  every  fact  of  life  is  placed  before  him 
in  due  time.  The  first  wealth  of  facts  comes 
to  these  city-bred  children  when  they  are  set 
down  in  the  middle  of  this  great,  busy,  beau- 
tiful farm.  John  Burrows  says:  "No  race 
257 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

that  does  not  take  to  the  soil  can  long  hold 
its  country.  In  the  struggle  for  survival  it 
will  lose  its  country  to  some  incoming  race 
that  loves  the  soil."  Already  the  Japanese 
farmers  in  California  have  shown  that  if  we 
should  let  them  in  they  would  take  this  whole 
country  in  a  few  years.  They  drive  the 
American  farmer  out  because  they  have  a 
passion  for  the  soil,  and  they  turn  their  whole 
families  in  to  till  it.  What  is  the  answer? 
Teach  our  young  to  love  the  soil  and  to  till  it 
well,  or  else  an  alien  race  will  take  away  their 
heritage.  The  first  lesson  in  Mooseheart  is 
to  till  the  soil. 

But  in  addition  to  being  a  farm,  Moose- 
heart  is  a  town.  The  young  folk  live  in  cot- 
tages and  do  their  own  cooking  and  house- 
keeping. There  are  no  great  dormitories 
where  hundreds  sleep,  and  no  vast  dining- 
room  where  they  march  in  to  the  goose-step. 
We  are  preparing  them  for  a  free  life,  and 
the  only  place  they  use  the  goose-step  is  in 
the  penitentiary.  Mooseheart  is  a  town 
instead  of  an  institution.  All  "institutional- 
ism"  is  cast  away.  In  each  cottage  is  a  group 
of  boys  or  a  group  of  girls  living  under  fam- 
ily conditions.  They  are  not  all  of  the  same 
258 


LIFE'S  PROBLEMS 

age;  some  are  big  and  some  are  little,  and 
the  big  ones  look  after  the  little  ones.  Each 
cottage  has  its  own  kitchen  and  orders  its 
own  supplies  from  the  general  store.  The 
girls'  cottages  have  each  a  matron  (some- 
times a  widow  who  with  her  little  ones  has 
been  admitted  to  Mooseheart),  and  she  ad- 
vises the  girls  how  to  do  the  buying  and  the 
cooking. 

In  the  boys'  cottages  there  is  a  proctor 
to  advise  them  and  usually  a  woman  cook. 
The  boys  who  care  to  can  learn  cookery  and 
household  buying  under  her  supervision.  All 
the  boys  do  their  own  dishwashing,  sweeping 
and  bed-making.  Once  three  boys  about 
fourteen  years  old  went  on  strike  because  the 
proctor  asked  them  to  scrub  the  dining-room 
floor  on  their  knees.  They  thought  this  work 
would  degrade  them,  and  they  started 
toward  the  superintendent's  office.  On  the 
way  they  met  me  and  told  me  their  troubles. 

"I  think  it  is  all  right  for  a  young  man  to 
scrub  a  floor  on  his  knees,"  I  said.  "I've  done 
it  for  my  mother  many  a  time.  I  have  been  a 
bootblack.  But  it  didn't  hurt  my  character. 
You  are  going  to  the  superintendent  for  his 
opinion.  He  is  a  Harvard  man,  but  he  worked 
259 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

his  way  through  school  and  one  of  his  jobs 
was  bellboy  in  a  hotel.  Had  he  been  too 
proud  to  work  as  a  servant  he  would  never 
have  gotten  the  education  that  makes  him 
head  of  this  great  school.  Didn't  you  ever 
scrub  a  floor  on  your  knees?  You  can  see  the 
dirt  come  out  with  the  suds  and  you  can  watch 
the  grain  of  the  wood  appear,  where  before 
it  was  hidden  by  dust  and  grease.  If  you 
never  saw  that,  you  have  missed  something 
that  I  have  seen  many  a  time.  To  know  how 
to  scrub  a  floor  is  as  much  a  part  of  your 
education  as  to  know  how  to  sandpaper  a 
floor  and  varnish  it.  We  could  hire  this  work 
done  better  than  you  can  do  it,  but  that 
wouldn't  be  giving  you  a  chance  to  learn  the 
work.  Now  I'm  not  telling  you  boys  to  go 
back  and  do  the  work  if  you  don't  want  to. 
Use  your  own  judgment.  But  fellows  that 
balk  on  a  job  never  go  far.  A  balky  man  is 
like  a  balky  horse,  everybody  gets  rid  of  him 
as  quickly  as  they  can.  A  quitter  is  never 
given  a  good  job.  They  always  keep  him  in 
a  place  where  it  doesn't  make  any  difference 
whether  he  quits  or  not." 

The  leader  of  the  boys  said:  "Aw,  piffle, 
cut  it  out.    We  might  as  well  be  scrubbing 
260 


LIFE'S  PROBLEMS 

the  floor  as  listening  to  this  talk.  Come  on, 
fellows."  He  led  them  back,  one  of  them  pro- 
testing that  he  would  never  scrub  a  floor  for 
any  man.  He  went  ahead  and  scrubbed  the 
floor  still  saying  that  he  wouldn't.  That  lad 
was  weaker  than  the  leader.  He  went  wher- 
ever he  was  led.  The  leader  was  a  boy  who 
made  his  own  decisions.  He  was  ashamed  of 
calling  off  the  strike,  but  he  did  it  because  he 
felt  the  strike  was  wrong. 

This  is  the  Mooseheart  idea  of  education. 
Every  boy  must  use  his  own  judgment.  He 
faces  every  fact  that  he  will  face  in  life,  and 
by  the  time  he  is  eighteen  his  judgment  is 
as  ripe  as  that  of  the  much  older  average 
man.  The  Mooseheart  boys  are  not  selected 
students.  They  come  from  the  humblest  fam- 
ilies, from  homes  that  have  been  wiped  out 
early.  But  the  training  at  Mooseheart  is  so 
well  adapted  to  human  needs  that  these  or- 
phans soon  outstrip  the  children  of  the  more 
fortunate  classes.  They  become  quick  in 
initiative,  sturdy  in  character  and  brilliant 
in  scholarship.  Visitors  who  come  from  boys' 
preparatory  schools  where  the  children  of 
the  rich  are  trained  for  college  are  amazed  to 
find  these  sons  of  the  working  people  so  far 
261 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

ahead  of  the  young  aristocrats.  The  Moose- 
heart  boys  as  a  group  have  the  others  beaten 
in  all  the  qualities  that  go  to  make  a  young 
man  excellent  We  have  prepared  them  for 
life. 


BUILDING   A   BETTER   WORLD   BY  EDUCATION 

AND  so  the  great  dream  of  my  life  has  been 
realized.  In  youth  I  saw  the  orphans  of  the 
worker  scattered  at  a  blow,  little  brothers 
and  sisters  doomed  to  a  life  of  drudgery,  and 
never  to  see  one  another  again.  No  longer 
need  such  things  be.  The  humblest  worker 
can  afford  to  join  an  association  that  guar- 
antees a  home  and  an  education  to  his  chil- 
dren. In  Mooseheart  the  children  are  kept 
together.  Family  life  goes  on,  and  with  it 
comes  an  education  better  than  the  rich  man's 
son  can  buy. 

As  individuals,  the  Moose  are  not  rich  men, 
but  in  cooperation  they  are  wealthy.  They 
have  a  plant  at  Mooseheart  now  valued  at  five 
million  dollars,  and  they  provide  a  revenue  of 
one  million  two  hundred  thousand  a  year  to 
maintain  and  enlarge  it.  They  received  no  en- 
dowment from  state  or  nation.  They  wanted 
to  protect  their  children  and  they  found  a 
263 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

way  to  do  it.  They  based  their  system  of 
education  on  the  actual  needs  of  men.  They 
know  what  life  is,  for  they  have  lived  it.  In 
mine  and  field  and  factory  they  had  tasted 
the  salty  flavor  of  real  things,  and  they  built 
a  school  that  has  this  flavor. 

The  war  drove  home  a  lesson  that  will 
forever  make  false  education  hateful  to  me. 
Education  in  the  wrong  direction  can  destroy 
a  nation  and  wreck  the  happiness  of  the 
world.  The  German  worker  was  taught  that 
he  would  get  rich,  not  by  patient  toil,  but  by 
taking  by  force  the  wealth  that  others  had 
created. 

On  my  return  from  France,  where  I  had 
witnessed  the  Hindenburg  drive  into  the  heart 
of  France,  I  addressed  the  Iron  Workers  in 
their  national  convention.  "I  am  glad,"  I 
said,  "that  I  was  born  an  iron  worker  and  not 
a  Chancellor  of  Blood  and  Iron.  For  the  iron 
I  wrought  has  helped  build  up  a  civilization, 
while  the  German's  *Blood  and  Iron'  has 
sought  to  destroy  it. 

"France  stands  knee-deep  in  her  own  blood 

while  the  iron  of  Germany  is  being  hurled 

into  her  breast.    Iron  Workers  of  America,  to 

you  has  God  given  the  answer  to  the  German 

264 


BUILDING  A  BETTER  WORLD 

thunderbolt.  The  iron  of  the  republic  shall 
beat  down  the  iron  of  the  kings.  Wherever 
I  walked  behind  the  battle  lines  in  France  I 
told  them  I  was  an  iron  worker  and  I  gave 
them  this  message  for  you : 

"  'The  American  iron  worker  will  not  fail 
you.  We  have  been  taught  to  believe  in  jus- 
tice as  the  German  believes  in  might.  We 
will  back  up  our  soldiers  with  ships  and  guns 
until  Kaiserism  is  beaten.  We  will  set  the 
workers  of  Germany  free— free  from  their 
foul  belief  in  murder  and  in  kings.  And 
when  we  have  bound  up  our  wounds  we  will 
build  a  new  world  that  shall  be  a  freer  world 
than  man  has  ever  known.' 

"I  have  dedicated  my  life  to  this  purpose. 
We  will  build  this  freer  world  by  the  right 
instruction  of  our  young.  Education  is  of  two 
kinds,  one  kind  is  good  and  the  other  is 
poison.  A  poisonous  education  took  but  one 
generation  to  turn  the  German  working  men 
into  a  race  of  blood-letters.  Wrong  educa- 
tion tears  a  nation  down.  Right  education 
will  build  it  up.  One  generation  of  right  edu- 
cation will  remake  the  world.  Who  will  fur- 
nish this  new  education?  I,  for  one,  will  do 
my  share,  and  more.  My  heart  is  in  this  one 
265 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

cause,  and  my  whole  life  from  now  on  shall 
be  devoted  to  it. 

"You  will  hear  me  speaking  for  it  on  every 
rostrum  and  in  every  schoolhouse  in  America. 
I  have  been  handicapped  in  life  because  I  had 
no  education.  But  it  is  better  to  have  no 
education  than  a  false  one,  for  I  was  left 
free  to  know  the  truth  when  I  found  it.  I 
went  into  the  mills  when  I  should  have  been 
in  school.  As  a  working  man  I  have  helped 
get  better  conditions  for  the  worker.  Think 
how  much  more  I  could  have  done  if  I  had 
had  an  education.  Your  leaders  have  done 
much  for  the  iron  workers  because  they  could 
see  farther  than  the  common  man.  The 
worker  with  an  education  can  see  far.  He  can 
judge  quickly  and  be  guided  rightly,  for  he 
has  knowledge  to  guide  him.  I  have  knelt 
and  prayed  to  God  to  direct  me.  Now  I  know 
He  has  answered  my  prayer;  My  mission  is 
to  bring  to  the  poor  man's  boy  the  ample 
education  that  the  rich  man  gives  his  son. 
Equal  education  will  make  men  equal  in  the 
gaining  of  wealth.  Education  is  Democracy. 

"A  French  soldier  lay  dying  on  the  battle- 
field, and  a  comrade  kneeling  by  him  asked 
what  last  word  he  wished  carried  to  his  wife 
266 


BUILDING  A  BETTER  WORLD 

and  children.  And  the  dying  man  said  with 
his  last  breath:  'Tell  them  that  I  gave  my 
body  to  the  earth,  I  gave  my  heart  to  France 
and  I  gave  my  soul  to  God.' 

"And  so  I  say  to  you  in  the  spirit  of  the 
French  soldier  that  this,  my  body,  I  will  give 
at  last  back  to  the  iron  earth,  in  whose  deep 
mines  and  smoking  metal  shops  my  muscles 
took  their  form.  This  heart  of  mine  that 
beats  for  liberty  and  equality  I  give — and 
give  to  its  last  beat — to  the  cause  of  equal 
education  for  our  young.  And  my  soul  at 
last  I  shall  render  back  unto  my  Maker 
knowing  that  I  have  served  His  cause  as  He 
has  given  me  to  see  it." 


CHAPTER  XLIX 

CONCLUSION 

H.  G.  WELLS  has  asked  all  scholars  to  unite 
in  writing  a  "Bible  of  the  New  Education." 
I  am  no  scholar,  but  if  Wells  will  take  sug- 
gestions from  an  iron  puddler,  I  offer  him 
these  random  thoughts. 

This  generation  is  rich  because  the  preced- 
ing generation  stored  up  lots  of  capital.  We 
are  living  in  the  houses  and  using  the  rail- 
roads that  our  fathers  built  by  working  over- 
time. 

When  labor  loafs  on  the  job  it  makes  itself 
poor.  We  are  not  building  fast  enough  to 
keep  ourselves  housed.  Were  it  not  for  the 
houses  our  fathers  built  this  generation  would 
be  out-of-doors  right  now,  with  no  roof  but 
the  sky. 

No  matter  who  owns  the  capital,  capital 

works  for  everybody.    Ford  owns  the  flivver 

factory,  but  everybody  owns  the  flivvers.  The 

oil  king  owns  the  gasoline,  but  he  has  to  tote 

268 


CONCLUSION 

it  to  the  roadside  where  every  one  can  get 
it.  Equal  division  is  the  goal  that  capitalism 
constantly  approaches.  No  man  wants  all 
the  gasoline.  He  wants  six  gallons  at  a  time, 
with  a  service  station  every  few  miles. 
Capital  performs  this  service  for  him.  Under 
"capitalism,"  so-called  wealth  is  more  equally 
divided  than  under  any  other  system  ever 
known. 

Work  is  a  blessing,  not  a  curse.  This 
country  had  the  good  luck  to  be  settled  by  the 
hardest  workers  in  the  world.  Their  big  pro- 
duction made  us  rich.  If  we  slacken  produc- 
tion we  will  soon  be  poor.  The  Indians 
owned  everything  in  common.  They  did  not 
work.  And  they  were  so  poor  that  this  whole 
continent  would  support  less  than  two  mil- 
lion of  them.  Thousands  of  Indians  used  to 
starve  and  freeze  to  death  every  hard  winter. 

The  white  man  who  doesn't  want  to  work 
is  sick.  He  needs  a  dose  of  medicine,  not  a 
dose  of  the  millennium.  The  Bible  says  that 
in  the  sweat  of  his  face  man  shall  eat  bread. 

When  labor  loafs,  it  injures  labor  first  and 

capital  last.     For  labor  grows  poor  to-day 

while  the  capitalist  gets  poor  to-morrow.  But 

to-morrow  never  comes.    The  capitalist  can 

269 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

turn  laborer  and  raise  himself  a  mess  of  pork 
and  beans. 

The  laborer  who  does  not  turn  capitalist 
and  have  a  house  and  garden  for  his  old  age 
is  lacking  in  foresight. 

Men  will  never  be  equal.  John  L.  Sullivan 
had  many  fights,  and  John  always  whipped 
the  other  fellow,  or  the  other  fellow  whipped 
John.  When  all  men  are  equal,  every  prize 
fight  will  end  in  a  draw,  and  every  batter 
will  knock  as  many  home  runs  as  Babe  Ruth. 

"There  is  enough  already  created  to  supply 
everybody  if  it  were  equally  divided."  Yes. 
And  there  is  enough  ice  at  the  North  Pole  to 
cool  off  the  Sahara  Desert  if  it  were  equally 
divided.  There  is  enough  water  in  the  seven 
seas  to  flood  the  six  continents  if  it  were 
equally  divided. 

The  time  to  quit  work  and  divide  the  wealth 
is  just  two  weeks  before  the  end  of  the  world. 
For  the  world's  surplus  of  supplies  is  just  two 
weeks  ahead  of  starvation.  Wheat  is  being 
harvested  in  one  country  or  another  every 
week  in  the  year.  And  yet  with  all  the  hard 
work  that  men  can  do,  they  can  not  boost 
the  world's  supply  of  bread  so  as  to  increase 
our  two  weeks'  lead  on  the  wolf  of  famine. 
270 


CONCLUSION 

The  wolf  is  ever  behind  us  only  two  weeks 
away.  And  if  we  stumble  for  a  moment,  he 
gets  nearer. 

American  machinery  enabled  the  western 
farmer  to  raise  and  harvest  as  much  wheat 
as  twenty  Russian  peasants.  In  India  where 
wheat  is  raised  by  hand,  the  labor  of  one 
family  will  only  feed  one  family.  But  in 
the  Dakotas,  the  labor  of  one  man  will  de- 
liver in  Chicago  enough  flour  to  feed  three 
hundred  men  a  year.  This  increase  in  man's 
power  to  produce  wheat  caused  the  world's 
population  to  double  itself  since  McCormack 
invented  the  reaper.  The  Chinese  and  Hindu 
millions  who  would  have  starved  to  death, 
have  been  fed,  and  that's  why  they're  with  us 
to-day.  The  natural  limit  of  population  is 
starvation.  The  more  bread  the  more  mouths, 
less  bread,  fewer  people.  Europe  and  the 
Orient  reached  the  starvation  limit  before 
America  was  settled.  A  bad  crop  meant  a 
famine,  and  a  famine  started  a  plague.  This 
plague  and  famine  would  sweep  off  a  third 
of  the  population,  and  the  rest  could  then 
raise  food  enough  to  thrive  on.  England  and 
Wales  have  had  famines,  Ireland  has  had 
famines,  France  has  had  famines,  Russia  has 
271 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

a  deadly  famine  after  every  bad  crop  year, 
while  in  India  and  China  famine  is  a  chronic 
condition. 

America  has  never  had  a  famine.  But 
we  are  not  exempt  from  famine.  In  the 
year  1816,  known  as  the  year  of  "eighteen- 
hundred-and-froze-to-death,"  the  crops  failed 
throughout  America  because  of  freezing 
weather  all  summer  long.  Little  or  no  food 
was  raised  and  the  Americans  would  have 
perished  from  famine  had  it  not  been  for  the 
wild  meat  in  the  woods.  The  people  lived  on 
deer  and  bear  that  winter.  To-day  if  our 
food  supply  fails  we  can  not  live  on  venison. 
No  country  is  by  natural  law  exempt  from 
famine.  Our  famine  will  come  when  we  fill 
this  country  as  thickly  as  men  can  stand; 
China  and  India  have  so  filled  themselves. 
Famine  awaits  us  when  we  repeat  their  folly. 
That  day  will  come  soon  unless  we  bar  the 
unworthy  from  our  gates. 

But  cold  weather  and  crop  failure  are  not 
the  only  things  that  could  bring  a  famine  in 
America.  Slacking  in  production  has  the 
same  effect  as  crop  failure.  A  farmers'  strike 
could  bring  a  famine.  A  railroad  strike  could 
do  the  same.  Many  men  advocate  a  combina- 
272 


CONCLUSION 

tion  farmers'  strike  and  railroad  strike  to 
destroy  capital  (that  is,  to  destroy  the  food 
supply).  Don't  get  impatient,  boys.  You 
shall  have  your  famine,  if  you  will  wait  long 
enough.  And  the  less  work  you  do  while 
you  are  waiting,  the  sooner  it  will  come. 
Nature  is  never  whipped.  Nature  will  take 
a  crack  at  you,  if  you  leave  an  opening.  The 
generation  that  went  before  you  worked  ten 
to  fourteen  hours  a  day;  they  battled  face  to 
face  with  a  raw  continent  in  their  fight  with 
Nature.  And  by  their  muscle  they  drove 
Nature  back  and  she  surrendered.  She  went 
down  like  crumpled  Germany,  and  she  signed 
a  treaty.  Hard  were  the  treaty  terms  our 
fighting  fathers  made  with  Nature.  They 
took  an  indemnity.  She  delivered  to  them 
more  houses  than  her  cyclones  had  destroyed, 
she  furnished  them  millions  of  cattle  in  place 
of  the  wild  deer  and  buffalo.  She  yielded  up 
her  coal  regions  to  warm  them  in  payment  for 
the  torture  her  winters  had  inflicted.  By  this 
treaty  she  gave  them  everything  she  had  and 
promised  to  be  good. 

We  are  the  inheritors  of  the  good  things  of 
that  peace  treaty.     We  were  born  rich;  we 
revel  in  the  "reparations"  that  our  fathers 
273 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

wrung  from  a  conquered  Nature.  But  Nature, 
like  Germany,  is  not  really  whipped.  If  we 
relax,  she  will  default  on  her  payments.  As 
long  as  Nature  is  not  really  whipped,  her 
treaty  is  a  scrap  of  paper.  Nature,  right 
now,  is  preparing  for  a  come-back.  She  will 
not  arm  openly,  for  we  would  then  arm  to 
meet  her.  She  is  planning  to  attack  us  by  a 
method  that  is  new.  She  will  weaken  us  by 
propaganda,  and  when  we  are  helpless  she 
will  march  over  us  at  will. 

Who  then  are  the  propagandists  that 
Nature  is  using  to  undermine  the  race  that 
conquered  her?  Communists,  slackers,  sick 
men  and  fools.  The  man  who  says  let  us 
"quit  work  and  divide  our  cake  and  eat  it"  is 
opening  the  way  for  Nature  to  strike  suddenly 
with  a  famine.  The  man  who  advocates 
"one  big  strike"  to  destroy  our  capital  is  the 
secret  agent  of  starvation.  Nature  when  up 
in  arms  can  sweep  men  off  like  flies.  She 
has  always  done  it  and  she  always  will,  unless 
man  uses  his  intelligence  and  his  cooperation 
to  fight  the  evils  in  Nature  and  not  to  fight 
his  fellow  men. 

"Capitalism,"  as  the  communists  call  it,  is 
an  imperfect  system.  But  it  is  the  only  system 
274 


CONCLUSION 

that  has  banished  famine.  Under  commun- 
ism and  feudalism  there  was  hunger.  Under 
capitalism  the  world  has  been  able  to  feed 
twice  as  many  mouths  as  could  be  fed  before. 

Capitalism  found  a  world  of  wood  and  iron 
ore,  and  made  it  into  a  world  of  steel.  How? 
It  puddled  the  pig-iron  until  the  dross  was 
out,  and  the  pure  metal  was  bessemered  into 
steel.  Now  the  task  is  to  purify  men  as  we 
have  purified  metals.  Men  have  dross  in 
their  nature.  They  break  under  civilization's 
load.  A  steel  world  is  hopeless  if  men  are 
pig-iron.  There  is  greed  and  envy  and  malice 
in  all  of  us.  But  also  there  is  the  real  metal 
of  brotherhood.  Our  task  is  to  puddle  out 
the  impurities  so  that  the  true  iron  can  be 
strong  enough  to  hold  our  civilization  up 
forever. 

I  have  been  a  puddler  of  iron  and  I  would 
be  a  puddler  of  men.  Out  of  the  best  part  of 
the  iron  I  helped  build  a  stronger  world.  Out 
of  the  best  part  of  man's  metal  let  us  build  a 
better  society. 

I  have  no  new  cure  for  the  ills  of  humanity. 

Life  is  a  struggle,  and  rest  is  in  the  grave. 

All  nature  is  in  commotion;  there  is  wind 
and  rain;  and  out  of  it  comes  seed  and 
275 


THE  IRON  PUDDLER 

harvest.  The  waters  of  the  sea  are  poured 
in  thunder  wrack  upon  the  hills  and  run  in 
rivers  back  into  the  sea.  The  winds  make 
weather,  and  weather  profits  man.  When 
will  man's  turmoil  cease,  when  will  he  find 
calm?  I  do  not  know.  I  only  know  that  toil 
and  struggle  are  sweet,  and  that  life  well 
lived  is  victory.  And  that  calm  is  death. 

Man  must  face  an  iron  world,  but  he  is  iron 
to  subdue  it. 

The  lessons  of  my  life  were  learned  at  the 
forge  and  I  am  grateful  for  my  schooling. 

"Thanks,  thanks  to  thee,  my  worthy  friend, 
For  the  lesson  thou  hast  taught! 

Thus  at  the  flaming  forge  of  Life 
Our  fortunes  must  be  wrought, 

Thus  on  its  sounding  anvil  shaped 
Each  burning  deed  and  thought" 

THE  END 


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